Syracuse is a small city with one enormous ancient site, one extraordinary building, and an island old town that quietly does most of the work. Here is what to actually do, in the order I would do it. The wider…
Archives for August 2026
The Cathedral of Syracuse: a Church Inside a Greek Temple
From the square it looks like a very fine Sicilian Baroque cathedral and nothing more. That is a façade in both senses. Behind it stands a Doric temple to Athena, built in the fifth century BC, and the temple was…
Ortigia: the Island Old Town of Syracuse
Ortigia is about a kilometre long and four hundred metres across, and it is the reason people fall for Syracuse. It is an island, joined to the mainland by two short bridges, and it has been lived in continuously for…
The Complete Guide to Syracuse, Sicily
Syracuse was once the largest city in the Greek world. Bigger than Athens. Cicero called it the most beautiful of them all, and he had seen a great many. It is now a working provincial city of about 120,000 people…
Polignano a Mare – What the Town Is Standing On
The marina is ugly, and I want to say that first, because nothing after it is. Cala Ponte is concrete and pontoons and a chandlery, fifteen minutes out of the old town, and there is nothing of Polignano in it…
Taormina, and the Light Going Off the Sea
Taormina belongs to about four hundred people for six hours a night, and I have spent most of this week trying to be awake for them. In the day it belongs to everybody. Two million a year come through a…
Getting to Taormina and Around
There is one fact about arriving in Taormina that guidebooks bury and that decides how your first hour goes. The train station is not in Taormina. It is called Taormina-Giardini, which sounds reassuring, and it sits at sea level roughly…
The Best Day Trips from Taormina
Taormina is an unusually good base, because it sits halfway up the east coast of Sicily with a volcano behind it, Greek ruins in both directions, and a railway line running along the shore. The catch is geography. The trips…
Mount Etna from Taormina
Etna is visible from most of Taormina, which makes it very easy to underestimate. It is the tallest active volcano in Europe, it is regularly in eruption, and getting up it involves a specific sequence of transport that most half-day…
The Best Time to Visit Taormina
Taormina is a small town on bare pale stone with very little shade, two hundred metres of climbing built into it, and roughly two million visitors a year. Every seasonal decision follows from those three facts. It is why May,…
The Best Photo Spots in Taormina
Taormina is one of the easiest places in Italy to photograph and one of the hardest to photograph well, for the same reason: there is a good frame every forty metres and most of them have already been taken. What…
The Best Beaches Near Taormina
The most useful thing I can tell you about Taormina’s beaches is that they are pebble, not sand. Smooth grey stones, steep cliffs behind, and water so clear you can count the stones four metres down. The clarity is a…
