Not just Taormina: seaside villages of eastern Sicily off the beaten track

Taormina, in July, is a funnel: Corso Umberto is walked at a crawl, the Greek Theatre is visited in a queue and the price of granita doubles. If you're after an **alternative to Taormina** that keeps the Ionian sea, the light and the baroque but gives you back a little breathing room, eastern Sicily is full of fishing villages where life still revolves around the fishing harbour and not around the tour buses. Here's a concrete itinerary, from north to south, with a few detours inland that are worth the effort.

The Riviera of the Cyclops

Let's start with the Riviera of the Cyclops, twenty minutes south of Catania. **Aci Castello** has a Norman castle of black lava stone planted on a spur overhanging the water; the nearby village of **Aci Trezza** is the one from Verga's *I Malavoglia*, with the basalt sea stacks that Polyphemus, according to myth, hurled at Ulysses. You eat pasta with sea urchins looking out at the Isola Lachea, and the protected marine area of the Cyclops Islands is perfect for snorkelling. No links here: these are places you'll find easily, but they remain a more seafaring than fashionable experience.

Heading up instead towards Messina, on the Tyrrhenian coast, there's a stop almost no one puts on the programme: the Roman mosaics of Patti Marina, a late-antique villa that survives literally beneath the pillars of the motorway, a stone's throw from the beach. It's the kind of place that shows just how much Sicily layers history and everyday life without turning it into a museum.

If you're already near Taormina and don't want to move too far, head up into the Alcantara valley: among the Etna nerello vineyards hides the Cuba di Santa Domenica at Castiglione di Sicilia, a domed Byzantine chapel a thousand years old, set among the olive groves. Half an hour from the sea and everything changes: silence, stone, no ticket office.

The seaside south-east

The heart of seaside undertourism, though, is the south-east. **Marzamemi**, an old Arab tuna fishery turned fishing village around Piazza Regina Margherita, is the most evocative resort from here up to Taormina, but with a different soul: low sand-coloured houses, nets, seafood restaurants carved out of the fishery's warehouses. A little further down, **Portopalo di Capo Passero** and the **Isola delle Correnti** mark the point where the Ionian and the Mediterranean touch; towards Ragusa, **Sampieri** lines up two kilometres of golden dunes and the ruins of the Fornace Penna, a Montalbano set. These are beaches that in June or September give themselves back to you almost empty.

Sea and archaeology

From a base in the south-east you can alternate sea and little-visited archaeology. Above Syracuse, the Euryalus Castle is the most complete Greek fortress in the Mediterranean, with moats and galleries carved into the rock, and you almost always visit it alone while Ortigia overflows. Inland, along the gorges of the Anapo river, Pantalica is a rock necropolis with thousands of chamber tombs: you arrive on foot, you bathe in the river's pools, and in summer it's a breath of air compared to the coast.

For the baroque, instead of crowding Noto alone, climb up to Caltagirone: the 142 steps of the Scala di Santa Maria del Monte are each faced with different painted majolica, and few climb it all the way to the top.

If you have more days and want to close the loop by crossing the island, a few stops westward repay the journey. On the Tyrrhenian coast, the rock of Cefalù with the Temple of Diana offers megalithic walls and a view over the gulf that few earn the climb to enjoy. In Palermo, leave the touristy centre and slip between La Cala and the Kalsa, in the old harbour with its Arab courtyards. In the Caltanissetta hinterland there's Sperlinga, a castle and an entire settlement carved into the tufa. And on the far west, two Phoenician-salt-pan gems: the Stagnone lagoon with Mozia and the Marsala salt pans and, near Selinunte, the Cave di Cusa, where the columns of the temples were left half-quarried, as if abandoned yesterday.

When to go

The right time does half the work: between late May and June, or in September and October, the sea is warm, the villages livable and the prices humane. Taormina remains gorgeous, but now you have ten good reasons to sleep elsewhere.

Practical guides for Catania

• Where to stay in Catania
• What to see in Catania in 2 days
• Where to eat in Catania
• How to get to Catania