The jewel in Mazara's crown, this museum revolves around its central exhibit, a bronze statue known as the Satiro danzante (Dancing Satyr), hauled from the watery depths by local fishermen in the late 1990s. The sculpture depicts a bacchanalian satyr dancing wildly like a whirling dervish, arms outstretched, head flung back, the centrifugal force evident in his flowing hair.
The museum is located in the deconsecrated shell of the Chiesa di Sant'Egidio. On entering, make sure you watch the 25-minute video before looking at anything else. In Italian, with English subtitles, the film tells the story of a group of fishermen who were working their nets 40km off the shores of Tunisia in 1997 when they pulled up the bronze leg of a statue. Time elapsed and they continued to fish in the same area, wondering if they would ever find the rest of the statue. Extraordinarily, they did so the next year – a rare original casting from the Hellenistic era. Overcome by romanticism, the boat's captain tells the camera: 'Lying on the deck with its face turned to the sky, it looked like someone who'd clung on, waiting to be rescued'. What followed was a 4½-year period of painstaking restoration, during which time Mazara strenuously tussled with the powers in Rome to ensure the return of the satyr, which only came home in 2003.
And what a beauty. Originally, it would have been used in Dionysian processions – today it commands its own form of no-less-passionate worship here.
