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…
Supporting Guide
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…
Where to Eat and Drink in Taormina
Sicilian cooking in Taormina sits between two pantries, and once you notice that, the menus stop looking random. On one side is the Ionian, so there is seafood. On the other are the slopes of an active volcano, so there…
Where to Stay in Taormina
There is only one decision that matters in Taormina, and it is not which hotel. It is up or down. The old town sits two hundred metres above the sea, the beaches are at the bottom, and a cable car…
A Taormina Itinerary: 2 to 4 Days
Taormina is small, and the mistake people make is treating it as a half day. The town gives up its sights quickly and its character slowly. The theatre takes an hour. The evening takes three days to understand. This itinerary…
The Best Things to Do in Taormina
Taormina is small enough that you can see the headline sights in a day and good enough that you should not. The list below is in the order I would actually do them, which is not the order of importance….
The Greek Theatre in Taormina
The famous thing about the ancient theatre in Taormina is not the theatre. It is the hole in it. The stage wall has fallen, and through the gap where it used to stand solid you get the Ionian sea on…
Getting to Matera and Around Basilicata
Matera is the one Italian town where the transport advice genuinely matters, because the obvious assumption is wrong. There is no Trenitalia service to Matera. The national rail network does not reach it. People book a through ticket, arrive at…
