The Bridge That Divides Italy

Zoom into a map of Italy and you will notice a gap where the tip of the toe of the boot-shaped peninsula seems to touch Sicily—the stretch of sea that makes Sicily an island. The Strait of Messina is just a couple of miles wide at its narrowest point, and between two coasts that never quite meet, the Mediterranean produces a distinct hallucination. Every so often, sailors see it: the fata morgana, a trick of light that makes the shoreline seem closer. The sorceress Morgan le Fay, in a Sicilian telling of the Arthurian legend...