Mondello beach and the Art Nouveau bathing pier

Mondello is Palermo's beach, twenty minutes from the centre, a two-kilometre arc of pale sand between the headlands of Monte Gallo and Monte Pellegrino. Standing out in the shallow water at the middle of the bay is the Antico Stabilimento Balneare, a green and white timber pavilion on piles built in 1913, connected to the shore by a pier.

The pavilion is what makes this more than a beach photograph. It is an isolated, symmetrical, strongly coloured object with water on all sides and the mountain behind — a background nothing else in Sicily offers. Late afternoon light comes down the bay from the west and turns both the sand and the timber warm; at sunrise the water is glass and the pier is empty, which is the calmest version.

In July and August the beach is wall-to-wall from mid-morning and parking near the front is effectively impossible; go early or go out of season, when the same bay is nearly deserted and the water is still clear. The sand is public along most of the arc, with paying lidos in between. The pier and pavilion are a private club: photographs from the beach and the promenade are fine, but check before planning to shoot on the structure itself.