The most talked-about film of the summer has sent thousands of travelers rushing to a small Sicilian island most of them had never heard of a year ago. For his sprawling, much-argued-over version of Homer’s Odyssey, Christopher Nolan chose Favignana, the largest of the Egadi Islands off the western tip of Sicily, to stand in for Ithaca, the rocky kingdom Ulysses spends ten years trying to get home to.
Matt Damon, as the wandering king, filmed the palace scenes at the Castello di Santa Caterina, the old fortress crowning the island’s highest point, while the cameras roamed its beaches and the impossibly clear water around it.
