As a sea breeze blew in from the Gulf of Naples, small, gold-coloured dust-devils slowly sprouted along the factory rooftop, spiralling their way east toward Mount Vesuvius with the precision of ballerinas pirouetting across a stage floor. In Gragnano, a town of 29,000 inhabitants located 30km south-east of Naples in Italy’s Campania region, the wind strikes like a bell toll, rhythmically throughout the day.

Residents initially thought the breeze was ‘Le Mistral’, a cool, dry wind that blows through Provence into the Mediterranean. They were half right. While the north-westerly wind goes by the same name – and is just as defining a feature in southern Italy as southern France – this Mistral (or Marino, as locals call it) blows the opposite way, bringing humidity and minerals from the sea into the streets of Gragnano.