Sicily

Eastern Sicily is dominated by Mount Etna, the largest and most active volcano in Europe — a constantly smoking, occasionally erupting giant whose black lava fields, craters and vineyards can be explored by cable car and 4x4 to the summit zone, on foot across the older craters, or by the narrow-gauge Circumetnea railway that loops around its base through lava-stone towns. The volcano's fertile slopes produce celebrated Etna wines, tasted at cellar doors among the vines. At Etna's foot sits Catania, a lively university city rebuilt in dramatic black-and-white baroque after the volcano's eruptions, with a famous fish market and a buzzing food and nightlife scene. North along the coast, Taormina is Sicily's glamorous balcony — a cliff-top town of medieval lanes and gardens whose ancient Greek theatre, with Etna and the sea as its backdrop, is one of the most beautifully sited ruins in the world, and whose beaches and the islet of Isola Bella lie just below.

Sicily was a heartland of ancient Greece, and its classical sites rival those of Greece itself. Syracuse (Siracusa), once among the most powerful cities of the Greek world, preserves a vast archaeological park — a great Greek theatre still used for summer performances, the Roman amphitheatre, and the echoing limestone cave known as the 'Ear of Dionysius' — while its historic core spills onto the small island of Ortigia, a captivating maze of baroque streets, a daily market, sea-washed lanes and a cathedral incorporating the columns of a Greek temple to Athena. On the south coast, the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento is one of the most magnificent Greek archaeological sites anywhere — a ridge of honey-coloured Doric temples, the Temple of Concordia almost perfectly intact, glowing above the almond groves and the sea, a UNESCO World Heritage Site best seen at golden hour or floodlit at night.

The west of the island centres on Palermo, the Sicilian capital — a gloriously chaotic, layered city where Arab-Norman palaces and cathedrals (the dazzling mosaics of the Palatine Chapel and the cathedral of Monreale just outside town, together a UNESCO site) stand amid faded baroque grandeur, teeming street markets (Ballarò, Vucciria, Il Capo) and what many consider Italy's finest street food — arancini, panelle, sfincione and the adventurous spleen sandwich. Nearby, the cliff-backed medieval town of Cefalù strings a golden beach beneath a Norman cathedral. In the island's south-east, the Val di Noto gathers a string of UNESCO-listed baroque towns rebuilt in warm golden stone after the catastrophic 1693 earthquake — the theatrical Noto, the two-level hill town of Ragusa with its Ragusa Ibla quarter, and the chocolate-making town of Modica — among the most harmonious townscapes in Italy, and a delight to wander in the evening light.

Sicily's coastline and offshore islands are a summer paradise. Golden beaches and turquoise coves ring the island — the white cliffs and warm shallows of the Scala dei Turchi near Agrigento, the nature reserve of the Zingaro near the western town of San Vito Lo Capo, and countless resort and wild beaches between. Off the coasts lie the boat-trip archipelagos: the volcanic Aeolian Islands north of the mainland — Lipari, the spa island of Vulcano, the chic Panarea and, above all, Stromboli, whose summit erupts in glowing bursts visible from the sea at night — and the clear-watered Egadi Islands off the wind-and-salt town of Trapani in the west. And everywhere there is the food: pasta alla Norma with aubergine and ricotta, fresh swordfish and tuna, couscous in the Arab-influenced west, the street-food classics, and the island's legendary sweets — cannoli, cassata, marzipan fruits and the granita-and-brioche breakfast — washed down with Nero d'Avola and Etna wines. Eating may be the best reason of all to come.