Sicily’s famed cascading limestone cliff may not be the obvious choice for the next takeover bid by the world’s richest man, but one Italian man is hoping for such an eventuality. Part of the island’s Turkish Steps is being readied for sale, with a call to Elon Musk to buy it. Ferdinando Sciabarrà, 72, who was last year officially declared owner of a slice of the cliff’s upper level after a long legal tussle with the local authority in Realmonte, Agrigento, and after years of complaints about the landmark’s upkeep, believes the multibillionaire would know how to look after it much better. The Scala dei Turchi, or Turkish Steps, is one of Italy’s most visited tourist sites and features prominently in the Inspector Montalbano books by the late author Andrea Camilleri. Sciabarrà, who formerly worked for the local chamber of commerce, staked his claim of ownership based on inheritance documents dating back to the 19th century. He was handed back his share of the cliff after being investigated for occupation of state-owned land. He said he was now putting it up for auction after requests to local and regional authorities to introduce measures to better protect the site, or turn it into a nature reserve, were snubbed. “It wasn’t even enough to say: ‘we will gift you the site’,” Sciabarrà told Corriere della Sera. “We got promises, but nothing else. Now, after a year, and with being worried about what looks like being another summer surge of tourists on the Scala, we are putting it up for auction, appealing first to Elon Musk.” The cliff, which is shaped like a huge staircase jutting into the Mediterranean from the coast of southern Sicily, has suffered erosion naturally but also from the huge number of tourists, some of whom have stolen pieces of rock, which consists of soft white limestone. In January, vandals defaced the landmark with red iron oxide powder. The site was temporarily closed and seized by prosecutors in early 2020 after complaints about its poor preservation. Sciabbarà was also investigated for crimes connected with the preservation of the site and ordered to pay a €9,100 (£7,600) fine last summer. “We wanted to donate it to the public administration, which remains ‘deaf’, we were also prevented from entrusting it to an environmental association,” Sciabarrà’s daughter, Angela, told Corriere. “Tourists should be allowed to visit safely with controlled access, and not via easily bypassable fences. Rockfall also needs to be prevented.”