In the beginning of the 1900’s, the Milanese entrepreneur Luigi Scaglia arrived at Mondello and was enchanted by the beauty of the beach, deciding to build the Ancient Balnear Establishment, an elegant building on stilts on the sea bed in the Art Nouveau style.
It is hard to think that in the past, the Mondello gulf was the mud port, an area similar to a swamp due to the earth descending from the mountains. Despite its aesthetic appearance, the dried quagmire with the leaves in it was used to make cord used to repair fishermen's nets. At the end of the nineteenth century, the area was blessed and became a reference point for the bourgeoisie and later on, for the tourists, Goethe also found Mondello “the most beautiful promontory in the world.”
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