Dusk in the old harbour at Ortigia

Ortigia does not have a golden hour in the way an open coast does. The island is dense, three storeys of limestone packed along narrow streets, and for most of the day the sun sits above a roofline you cannot see from where you are standing. What it has instead is reflected light. In the last hour the low sun comes across the Porto Grande and strikes the western facades along the Lungomare Alfeo, and the whole waterfront turns the colour of apricot skin. Then the walls give that colour back into the streets behind them. You do not photograph the sunset here. You photograph what the sunset does to the stone.

The old harbour is the wide bay on the western side of the island, between the Ortigia waterfront and the far shore across the water. Walk it from the bridge, past the marina and the fishing boats, along the ficus trees of the Foro Italico, and you pass the Fonte Aretusa with its papyrus growing in fresh water a few metres from the sea. Keep going and the promenade narrows beneath the sea walls before ending at the Castello Maniace on the point. That is a twenty five minute walk at an ordinary pace, and it is the most useful stretch of ground in the city.

It is busy at dusk, and for a proposal that is an advantage rather than a problem. The passeggiata fills the promenade, everyone is looking at the water or at each other, and a man with a camera at forty metres is invisible. Salvo works these streets from a distance, on a long lens, moving with the crowd rather than against it. You walk where you would have walked anyway. Nothing is staged, nobody is asked to clear a space, and the first anyone knows of it is when you stop at the railing. Afterwards there are twenty minutes of blue hour, which in Ortigia is the better light in any case.

The hours are worth writing down, because Ortigia sits at the eastern end of Sicily and the light goes earlier here than it does in Agrigento. In July the usable window opens around 19:30, and the promenade is still warm at eleven at night. In October it opens around 17:15, which lands neatly before dinner and gives you an unhurried evening afterwards. In February it opens around 16:30, the streets behind Piazza Duomo are half empty, and the city is at its best for photographs. Almost nobody comes then, which is precisely the argument for coming then.

If the harbour feels too public, the island has quieter ground five minutes away. The lanes of the Giudecca are narrow enough that two people fill the frame completely. Piazza Duomo, white and enormous, is extraordinary at blue hour, though it is a working square with restaurant tables down one side. The sea walls below the castle are exposed and often windy. We tend to plan a route rather than a single spot: start inland while it is still bright, arrive at the water as the colour turns, and finish under the walls as the lamps come on.

For ceremonies rather than proposals, Ortigia is a city with procedures. Civil marriage in Italy takes place in venues designated by the municipality, and the documents required of foreign couples differ by nationality and change over time. Cristiana handles the paperwork and the translation, and she is a legal translator as well as a celebrant, so the file that reaches the registrar is in order before you land. You should still confirm current requirements with the Comune di Siracusa and with your own consulate, because nothing written here replaces what the authority tells you directly. A symbolic ceremony, which many couples choose, carries none of that weight and can be held wherever the light is best.

Ortigia rewards people who know which hour they are aiming at, and that is really the only planning this city demands of you. Common questions about documents, timings and how a day in Siracusa is put together are answered at /faq. When you are ready, write to us with your dates, and tell us whether you want the harbour full of people or the island in February with nobody on it, and we will build the evening from there.