The Mystery of Margarita at Bar del Sole

A Fictional Tale Set in Taormina, Sicily: The Mystery of Margarita at Bar del Sole

🍊 The Bar that Doesn’t Appear on Maps

There’s a bar in Taormina that doesn’t appear on maps. But in the summer, if you follow the scent of oranges and the sound of laughter echoing off sun-warmed stone, you might stumble upon it.

Bar del Sole sits just off a narrow stairway that spills toward the sea. Its red-and-white striped awning marks it like a beach umbrella. The barista, Giovanni, is always mid-gesture, mid-laugh, and mid-story. His dog naps beside a basket of oranges so bright they seem painted.

But it’s not the oranges that make people linger. It’s the mural.

The Mural That Watches and Waits

She watches from the wall. Still listening.

She watches from the front wall, larger than life and quiet as dusk. Her haunting green eyes are steady, painted with the care reserved for saints and lost lovers. Windblown hair falls across her cheek like splattered wine, and the shadows around her mouth suggest she once smiled often—perhaps for Giovanni, perhaps for someone else.

Locals say the mural changes with the light. Tourists say she looks familiar. Giovanni just shrugs as if to say: She’s still listening.

The Voice of an Angel

He’ll tell you she used to sing here; that her voice could stop conversations mid-sentence; that she wore green silk and never drank the same thing twice. And the bar was never quite the same when she didn't return.

But ask him how she died, and he’ll wave his hand like he’s brushing away a fly.

“People don’t die,” he says. “They just change addresses.” Then he waves for another order, already onto the next story.

Some say she drowned in the very waters below Taormina. Others say she ran off with a French painter. One old man swears he saw her last year, buying lemons at the market in Catania. Could it be?

Giovanni’s Ritual and the Blood Orange Offering

What’s certain is this: every year, on the first warm evening of May, Giovanni places a single blood orange beneath the mural. There’s no ceremony, only the fruit and the silence that follows.

And if you’re lucky—if the wind is right, and the moon is full—you might hear a voice rise from the back of the bar. Low, smoky, threaded with longing. A song you don’t recognize, but somehow remember.

And Giovanni? You'll find him polishing a glass, smiling like he holds the best-kept secret in Sicily.