Visit Scopello, a fascinating little village centred around a fortified baglio (farmstead). Once providing shelter for the local landowner’s animals and workers, this wonderfully evocative 18th century construction now plays hosts to a couple of restaurants, a café and a shop, all of which spill out into the cobbled courtyard in the summer months. Scattered round the baglio are a few houses and restaurants, one of which, Le Terrazze, offers enchanting views out to sea.

Scopello’s coastline is rocky, craggy and dramatic. Steep cliffs and sea stacks have been sculpted over millennia by the sea and the wind, prickly pear bushes cling perilously to precipitous inclines, plane, pine and eucalyptus trees cluster together, and a gentle, almost Arcadian atmosphere hangs in the air.

In a small bay amongst all this beauty sits the tonnara, a tuna fishery. 

The harmonious perfection of the tonnara and its surroundings has piqued the imagination of location managers, who have featured it in several films and TV programmes in recent years, including Ocean’s Twelve (with Brad Pitt and George Clooney) and Inspector Montalbano.