The "Atelier sul mare" in Castel di Tusa, province of Messina, is practically a museum, an art gallery looking over an enchanting blue bay. Rooms were made by some of the greatest contemporary artists, from the Japanese Nagasawa to Fabrizio Plessi, Pietro Dorazio and Michele Canzoneri.

Here, contrarily to other hotels, the tour doesn't start from the lobby to the outside, but winds along the corridors, in the rooms, the halls. For once the gap between work of art and users is cancelled: here art is not just for admiration, you use it, you sleep in it, you "live" in it.

So you can end up sleeping in a raft shaped room with twenty screens that fill us with electronic splashes, designed by Fabrizio Plessi, or in Nagasawa's mystic cell without electricity, nor wardrobes, nor bedside tables, just candles. O in the Prophet Room, the Yemenite room that Dario Bellezza, Adele Cambrìa and Presti himself dedicated to Pierpaolo Pasolini, all in earth and hay with a bed recalling a Masaccio deposition and the bathroom a true water game with its rusty tubes splashing in the whole environment.

And the Conrad inspired Shadow Line, the room Canzoneri saw as a dive into the sea of Sicily, where there is no border between the environment and the toilet, sink, bidet and bathtub are all there around the bed-boat, or the homage to Italy's two major islands, Sicily and Sardinia paid by Maria Lai in an all-blue and black room where the shower is a waterfall coming from a glassy ceiling.

And so on, because the artist rooms are 15, but for those who cannot bear all these sensations there are also rooms with all the most conventional comforts and where art is present but only in the shape of sculptures, paintings and the most traditional manifestations.

In the "Atelier sul mare" young artists exhibitions are periodically taking place and also ceramics courses are organised. Int he urroundign area S.Stefano di Camastra cannot be missed, famous for its colourful ceramics and the Fiumara d'Arte, an open air museum designed by volcanic Antonio Presti himself (who also signed the Poet's train and Catania's Stesicorea House), with enormous monuments signed by great artists (from Pietro Consagra to Tano Festa) and installed along the beaches and rivers of the splendid Nebrodi territory.

Atelier sul Mare, Castel di Tusa (Me), tel. 0921.334295
Double, per person 105.000 Lira with breakfast
Double in art room, per person and with breakfast: 140.000 lira