Four days in Catania: a black city built out of the lava that buried it
Three nights under Etna, with a baroque centre in volcanic stone, a day in Taormina, and the loudest food markets in Sicily.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Catania
- Places
- 10 across 4 days
In 1669 a lava flow from Etna came down the slope, went through the city walls and out into the sea, adding several hundred metres of new coastline. In 1693 an earthquake flattened what was left and killed a large part of the population. Catania was rebuilt from scratch over the following decades, in one style, using the black basalt the volcano had just delivered and white limestone for contrast.
That is why it looks like nowhere else in Italy. The buildings are grey-black, the streets are wide and straight because they were laid out at once by people who had just been buried, and the whole centre is one enormous piece of eighteenth century town planning with a live volcano behind it.
It is also loud, unpolished and cheap, in a way Taormina forty kilometres up the coast is not. Four days is one for the city, one for Taormina, one for the mountain if you want it, and enough evenings to eat properly.
Highlights
- A monastery the size of a village, now full of students, with a lava flow frozen against its wall
- A castle that was on the sea until the volcano filled in the shore around it
- The Greek theatre at Taormina, with Etna framed in the gap where the stage wall fell down
- Coarse water ice with a soft bun to dip in it, eaten at eight in the morning as breakfast
Where to stay
Catania, three nights
A Greek colony from the eighth century BC that has been destroyed by lava and earthquakes at least seven times and rebuilt on top of itself every time. Roman theatres surface in the middle of residential blocks, because the houses were put up over them.
It is Sicily's second city and the working one: a university with tens of thousands of students, a port, and an airport that makes it the entry point for most of the island. Nothing about it is arranged for visitors, which is much of the pleasure.
Day by day
Day 1 in Catania
The black square, the cathedral, and an elephant
Start in the main square, which is the centrepiece of the rebuilt city and is made of the two local materials: black lava and white limestone, used together in stripes and panels. In the middle stands a Roman-era elephant carved from lava with an Egyptian obelisk strapped to its back, assembled here in the 1730s because the city decided it was a lucky object. It is now the emblem of Catania and everybody calls it by a nickname.
The cathedral behind it is dedicated to a third century martyr whose festival in February brings a million people onto these streets for three days and is one of the largest religious gatherings anywhere. Inside, just to the right of the door, is the tomb of Vincenzo Bellini, who wrote Norma and died at thirty-three in Paris.
Then eat. This is a city where dinner starts late and the good places are full of students.
- 16:00
Piazza del Duomo
ReligiousThe square the rebuilt city was designed around, in black and white stone, with the elephant fountain in the middle and the city hall on one side. Sit at a café on the corner and watch the traffic negotiate around it.
- 17:15
Cattedrale di Sant'Agata
ReligiousRebuilt after the 1693 earthquake on Norman foundations, with granite columns in the front that were taken from the Roman amphitheatre. Underneath it are the remains of Roman baths, open to visit on the same site.
- 20:00
Dinner, and a first pasta alla Norma
EatAubergine, tomato, basil and a hard salted ricotta grated over the top. Every restaurant in the city does it and the cheap ones do it best.
With more time: Via Etnea, the straight shopping street running north from the square, is aimed directly at the volcano, and on a clear evening the whole street ends in a snow-covered cone. Walk up it as far as the public gardens for the effect.
Day 2 in Catania
Taormina, and a theatre with a volcano in it
Take the bus rather than the train: the station at Taormina is down at sea level and the town is three hundred metres above it, so the train leaves you with a bus ride or a taxi anyway. An hour and a bit from Catania and you are in the prettiest and most expensive small town in Sicily.
The reason to come is the theatre. It was cut by Greek colonists into the top of the hill, rebuilt in brick by the Romans, and the back wall of the stage has fallen down, which turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to it: the gap frames the coastline and Etna beyond it. Concerts still happen here in summer.
The rest of the town is a single medieval street of shops with a balcony halfway along that hangs over the sea, and a public garden made by an Englishwoman who was exiled here and built follies out of brick and lava.
- 10:30
Teatro Antico
HistoricGreek in origin, Roman in what survives, and the most spectacularly sited theatre in the Mediterranean. Go early or late; the middle of the day is a queue and full sun on white stone.
- 12:45
Lunch off the main street
EatTaormina is priced for cruise passengers. Walk one level down from the main street, where the lanes are residential, and it becomes a normal Sicilian town again.
- 14:15
Piazza IX Aprile
VisitA small square halfway along the main street with a terrace hanging over the drop, a clock tower at one end and the whole bay below. This is the view on every postcard of Sicily.
- 15:15
Parco Duca di Cesarò
VisitPublic gardens laid out in the late nineteenth century by an Englishwoman who came here after a scandal at home, filled with brick and lava follies that look like nothing else. Shady, quiet, and free.
With more time: Isola Bella, the little island joined to the beach by a spit of shingle, is directly below the town and reachable by the cable car. It is a nature reserve now, the water is clear, and it is where to spend an afternoon if the theatre took less time than you expected.
Day 3 in Catania
The monastery, the church street, and the castle the lava moved
The Benedictines of Catania built themselves one of the largest monasteries in Europe and then, in 1669, watched a lava flow come down the hill and stop against the outside wall. They built over it. The complex is now the humanities faculty of the university, so it is full of students, largely free to walk into, and you can see the black flow embedded in the structure.
Next to it is the church the same order started and never finished: a bare stone front with the columns cut off halfway up, abandoned when the money and the confidence ran out. It has a meridian line in the floor and a view from the dome.
Downhill from there, a street of four churches and three convents in two hundred metres, and then a thirteenth century castle that was built on a rock in the sea and is now four hundred metres inland, because the same lava flow filled in everything around it.
- 09:30
Monastero dei Benedettini di San Nicolò l'Arena
ReligiousTwo enormous cloisters, a baroque kitchen with the ovens still in it, and excavated Roman houses under the floor. Guided tours run several times a day in English and are worth the small ticket; the courtyards you can wander into for nothing.
- 11:45
Via Crociferi
LandmarkA short, steep street of religious buildings that is the most photographed thing in the city after the elephant, best in the late afternoon when the light gets under the arch at the top.
- 12:45
Lunch near the university
EatStudent prices, big portions, and the best arancini in the city sold from bakeries by the piece. Eat one standing up before you sit down for anything else.
- 14:30
Castello Ursino
HistoricA squat square castle with round towers, built for Frederick II in the 1230s when the sea came up to its walls. It now holds the city's art collection, and the odd thing is standing at the base and realising where the water used to be.
With more time: The Roman theatre, wedged between houses a few streets north west of the cathedral, is the strangest ruin in the city: you go through a normal doorway and find yourself in the seating, with balconies and washing lines directly above the top row.
Day 4 in Catania
The markets, and one last look at the mountain
Catania's markets are the reason a lot of people like the city, and they run in the morning only. Fish is sold on slabs beside the cathedral square with a good deal of shouting and swordfish heads on display; the bigger general market north of the centre sells everything else, and the noise is genuinely theatrical.
Buy fruit for the journey, eat a granita, and take one more walk up the straight street to see whether the volcano is out.
The airport bus goes from the station square and takes twenty minutes, so a mid-afternoon flight is comfortable.
- 08:30
Fera 'o Luni
VisitThe city's main historic market, food at one end and clothes and hardware at the other, at its best between eight and eleven. Cash, and keep your bag in front of you.
- 10:30
Giardino Bellini
LeisureThe nineteenth century public gardens at the top of the shopping street, with a bandstand, a hedge maze that predates the park, and the best place in the city to sit down with what you have just bought.
- 11:45
Granita, then the airport bus
EatAlmond granita and a soft bun at a bar counter, and then twenty minutes to the terminal on the airport bus.
With more time: If you have a fourth full day rather than a departure morning, this is where Etna goes: the early bus up, the cable car, a walk around the old craters, and back by the middle of the afternoon.
Before you go
Where to stay
The grid between the cathedral square and the university is the obvious choice: everything below is a ten minute walk from it, and the streets are wide enough to be quiet at the back of a building. Around Via Etnea, the long straight shopping street pointed at the volcano, is convenient and noisier.
The blocks immediately around the central station and the port are cheap and shabby, and fine by day. Catania is not a dangerous city but it is a scruffy one, and the usual rules about bags and phones apply near the markets.
Getting around
The centre is flat, gridded and entirely walkable. There is a small metro that is useful for reaching the station and not much else, and buses to the coast and the volcano leave from the square in front of the station.
The airport is five kilometres from the centre with a frequent bus, which makes Catania the easiest place in Sicily to fly into. Trains run up the coast to Taormina and Messina and are slow but scenic; buses to Syracuse and Palermo are faster than the equivalent train.
Etna, and how to do it
The volcano is forty minutes away and there are two ways up. The cheap way is the once-daily public bus from the station square to the mountain refuge at nineteen hundred metres, which gets you a lunar landscape of old craters, a cable car and a walk. The expensive way is a guided tour with a four-wheel drive that takes you to around three thousand metres, which is the only way to get near the summit craters.
Either way, take a fleece and proper shoes. It is fifteen degrees colder up there than in the city, the ground is sharp black gravel, and weather closes the upper section without notice. Activity levels change what is permitted, sometimes at a day's notice, so check before you commit.
Eating
Catania's food is aggressive in the best way. Pasta alla Norma, with fried aubergine, tomato and salted ricotta, named after the opera by the composer born round the corner from the cathedral. Arancini, which here are cone-shaped and the size of a fist. Horse meat, grilled on street braziers, which is a genuine local speciality and not a mistranslation.
Breakfast in summer is granita, a coarse-grained water ice in almond, mulberry or coffee, eaten with a soft brioche for dipping. It is the single best thing about a Sicilian morning and it is served from about seven.
Catania is not a pretty city and it does not want to be one. It is black, noisy, half ruined and half rebuilt, with a mountain that has destroyed it repeatedly still smoking at the end of the street, and the people who live here treat that as completely normal.
Eat well, get up early for the market, and go and stand on the lava.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Catania or Palermo?
- Palermo for the Norman and Arab layers, the markets and the sheer strangeness. Catania for the baroque, the volcano and the easier logistics: the airport is close, the centre is flat and gridded, and Taormina and Syracuse are both an hour away. If you have a week, do both, with a train or a bus between them.
- How do I climb Etna?
- The public bus from the station square goes once a day, early, to the refuge at nineteen hundred metres and comes back in the afternoon. From there a cable car and a jeep take you higher, or you can walk around the lower craters for nothing. A guided tour is the only way to get near the summit and costs several times as much.
- Is Taormina worth the day?
- For the theatre, yes, without qualification. For the town, it depends how you feel about designer shops and cruise crowds on a beautiful medieval street. Going early, seeing the theatre before ten and leaving in the afternoon gets you the good half of it.
- Is Catania safe?
- Yes, with the ordinary big-city caution. It looks rougher than it is: peeling stucco, graffiti and traffic. Petty theft happens around the markets and the station, so carry nothing loose, and the historic centre is busy and fine at night.
- When should I come?
- April to June, or late September to November. July and August in eastern Sicily are punishing, well over thirty-five degrees for weeks. Winter is mild at sea level and snowy on the mountain, which is when the view up the shopping street is at its best and you can ski in the morning and sit outside at lunch.