Baffo Beach

they had a feel for location, those ancient greeks. on the south-west coast of sicily, the colony of selinunte seems placed for effect, rising on a low cliff of sandy clay above a buff-coloured beach that stretches for miles on either side. the ground around the handsome doric temple that dominates the seaward part of the site is covered in fennel, poppies, sea holly, gorse and the wild parsley (selinon in greek) that almost certainly gave the settlement its name.when the connoisseur and art collector richard payne knight visited selinunte in 1777, this was a desolate, wild and romantic place ? we know as much because payne knight had two artists in his train, jacob philipp hackert and charles gore, whose job it was to chart their patron's travels, and several of their watercolours of selinus, as it was then known, are now in the british museum.corners of the site are still as sublimely bucolic today as in those sentimental scenes of long-horned cattle amid the ruins; but the seaward view has changed beyond recognition. for years, a combination of malaria and poverty kept development to a minimum along this pristine stretch of coastline. today however, marinella di selinunte, once a scatter of fishermen's shacks to the east of the temple mound, has become a sprawl of seaside houses and cheerful beach diners with names like boomerang bar and baffo's castle.