The castle on the sea

It is an unknown universe, beyond the waves. Between the silver reflections and the deep blue you sense something distant, threatening, alien. It doesn't matter if this is the Mare Nostrum, the small and familiar Tyrrhenian Sea, and not a hostile ocean. The suggestion of the sea is eternal: beyond the clouds on the horizon there could be an enemy, and there is certainly the unknown.

The ancient people of the Bronze Age village knew it, the Etruscans knew it, who built one of the most important ports of antiquity nearby, invoking the protection of the goddess Uni, that is Astarte, to whom they dedicated a sanctuary. The noble families knew this, and they built the castle in the Middle Ages, passing it from one to the other with the papal blessing. And perhaps even the Nazi soldiers, who during the Second World War decided to use it as a military post.

It is even useless to point out that this impression has nothing to do with the legends about the presence of ghosts in the castle, which a careful direction in favor of the tourist industry underlines by telling of mysterious figures glimpsed, of objects that move on their own, of doors that you hear knocking, but without wayfarers. No, the magic of Santa Severa is not this.

Leaving the beach behind, even better if on an autumn day at the end of the season, and therefore away from the crowds, on the rocks below the castle you can get a very different, more personal and authentic message.

The sound of storm surges, the whistle of the Mistral that pushes the waters to show their energy since the end of the summer, the jerks of the wings of a cormorant pushed here and there by the invisible force of the air: everything is useful for rediscovering a perception clear, which gives us a stronger sense of our dimension and at the same time with lungs full of brackish air, and a robust awareness of our place in creation.