Nothing happens in the cathedral square and it is the best thing in Sicily. I mean that precisely. There is no attraction in it. There is a church on one side and a run of pale facades on the other…
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…
The Complete Guide to Taormina
Taormina is a small town on a shelf of rock two hundred metres above the Ionian sea, with an active volcano along the coast and a Greek theatre on its edge that frames both. Almost everything that confuses people here…
Matera, and the Town That Was Emptied
I am sleeping in a room that somebody was made to leave. Not this room exactly. I have no idea who was in this one, and nobody offered to tell me, and I did not ask because I could not…
