The diversity of the island’s offer allows for unique experiences for individuals, groups of friends and families. With such a varied tourist offer, we have selected five must-visit destinations in eastern Sicily.

Taormina

One of the most renowned and popular tourist destinations on the entire island, Taormina lies between the slopes of Mount Etna and the Ionian Sea, an enchanting location from which to admire a unique landscape. Percorrendo il bellissimo Corso Umberto è d’obbligo visitare il Teatro Greco, il Duomo di epoca Normanna e la natura incontaminata dell’Isola Bella a poca distanza dal centro cittadino. For those who would like to experience the pearl of the Ionian Sea in a new way, with the discovery of places that have stood the test of time, we recommend our tour Places of Escape: Around Taormina.

Nebrodi Protected Area

During the sultry summer months, some people prefer the cool of the mountains. In Sicily, too, it is possible to enjoy a bucolic holiday and immerse oneself in nature, art and history: the Nebrodi Protected Area is wonderful to visit, even for those who have already experienced the island’s beaches and wish to have a different experience. This is the largest protected area in the region, full of trails and paths through unique habitats. To make the most of the opportunities the park offers, we recommend our Tour Journey to Another Sicily to immerse yourself in the roots of the most authentic Sicily.

Catania

Catania is the second largest city on the island – after Palermo – and is certainly the easiest to reach thanks to the Fontanarossa Vincenzo Bellini International Airport, located a few kilometres from the heart of the city. Once in the centre of Catania, a Unesco World Heritage Site, it is nice to get lost among the Baroque buildings, the churches and the renowned Benedictine Monastery, the Roman amphitheatres, the Frederician Castle and much more. Catania also hosts the third largest religious festival in the world, dedicated to the cult of Saint Agatha. Of great interest is discovering the places that accompanied the life of the patron saint with the Catania and the gifts of Saint Agatha tour. For those wishing to sample the city’s gastronomic delicacies, don’t miss the Flavours, Colours, Lights and Shadows of Catania tour.

Etna

Those who visit Catania remain open-mouthed in front of the undisputed queen of the city: Mount Etna. “A’ Muntagna” with its 3323 metres is the largest active volcano in Europe, and an ideal place for anyone who enjoys hiking and trekking in fine weather, and who will be able to take advantage of the Magmasantissima tour: Etna. For those who prefer to discover the excellent wines produced on the majestic slopes of Etna, we recommend our Iter Vitis tour, a visit to a wine cellar on Etna.

Siracusa

A focal point of Magna Graecia, Syracuse is rich in artistic monuments ranging from Greek to Baroque and modern art. On the island of Ortigia, within the city, you can visit the Cathedral and the Maniace Castle, stroll along the new seafront promenade to admire a unique sunset and enjoy excellent seafood specialities. For those who would like to experience the city of Archimedes in a new way, we recommend the Gardens of Sicily tour, during which you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of one of the most magical gardens in eastern Sicily: Gardens of the Latomie, Villa Reinmann.

Want to discover the best of eastern Sicily in one trip? Contact us for a customised tour!

We are waiting for you in Sicily!

L'articolo 5 must-visit destinations in eastern Sicily proviene da Sicilytudine.

What are the Sicilian Literary Parks?

Literary Park named after Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Literary Park named after Luigi Pirandello

Leonardo Sciascia Literary Park

Literary Park named after Salvatore Quasimodo

A Literary Park named after Giovanni Verga

The Elio Vittorini Literary Park

The Literary Park named after Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

It stretches over a vast area of western Sicily: from Palermo, passing through the Santa Margherita area, to Palma di Montechiaro and embraces all the places linked to the writer’s family and childhood. Palermo, for example, is the setting of the famous book ‘The Leopard’ and the place of residence of the Tomasi family.

The park named after Luigi Pirandello

It focuses mainly on his house-museum in Contrada Caos, in the Agrigento area. The area extends as far as the maritime area of Porto Empedocle – a crucial place for the young Pirandello where his father’s warehouses were located – and the surrounding areas, rich in sulphur mines, a symbol of a popular world now lost but which strongly influenced the author.

The Leonardo Sciascia Literary Park

The area covered by this park is also vast: here a single route brings together the areas of the sulphur mines in western Sicily with places that have become famous for mafia-related news stories. The focal points are Regalpietra, the town born from the author’s imagination, Recalmuto, the writer’s birthplace, and Caltanissetta, where Sciascia was educated and spent his youth.

Salvatore Quasimodo Literary Park

La Terra impareggiabile (The Unrivalled Land) is the title of his last collection of poems, as well as the name of Salvatore Quasimodo’s Literary Park. Created by the will of his only heir, the park intends to take the visitor to Quasimodo’s main places: Modica, Roccalumera, Messina, Tindari, the Aeolian Islands, Syracuse, Pantalica and the Agrigento area.. All places where it is still possible to breathe in the roots of Sicilianity and the ancient Greek lyricism so dear to the author.

The Literary Park dedicated to Giovanni Verga

The Arcipelago dei Ciclopi, the municipality of Aci Trezza and the Norman Castle of Aci Castello, in the province of Catania, are the areas of the Literary Park dedicated to Giovanni Verga, where the protagonists of the author’s veristic novels lived. Here it is possible to visit places linked to the history of the Toscano family, such as the Casa del Nespolo (Medlar House), the fountain and the church of Aci Trezza.

The Literary Park named after Elio Vittorini

Last but not least is the Park dedicated to the famous writer Elio Vittorini in Syracuse. The magical city of Syracuse was the birthplace of the author and provided a wonderful backdrop for several of his works. The route includes the Island of Ortigia, the Umbertino Bridge and the astonishing beauty of the cathedral, leading visitors into a visual tale that engages all the senses.

The Road of the Writers

The Region of Sicily recently decided to dedicate a state road – which crosses the provinces of Agrigento and Caltanissetta – to its most famous writers: the Strada degli Scrittori (Writers’ Road). Created thanks to the idea of Sicilian journalist Felice Cavallaro, the stretch of SS 640 is another example of the importance that the island attaches to its culture and to the men who have made it famous throughout the world.

If you too would like to discover a special itinerary and immerse yourself in the island’s literary culture, contact us for a tailor-made tour.

L'articolo <strong>The Literary Park in Sicily</strong> proviene da Sicilytudine.

After all, Sicily is always an exclusive destination where leisure and business activities can be combined for the best possible experience.

Sicily attracts millions of tourists every year.

Sicily boasts many amazing sceneries for outdoor and indoor team building activities for companies that aim to improve their team performances.

Tailor made corporate event in Sicily

We offer to travel on a journey made just for you and your team. Travel on the footsteps of ancestors and build the best personal and meaningful memories.

There are 4 key elements for a successful incentive in Sicily:

1) Exclusive and unusual locations
Finding the perfect accommodation in one of the best Sicily destinations is just the first step.
2) Unforgettable gala dinners and parties
Great unconventional meeting venues, sometimes more interesting than the usual corporate hotels
3) Great ways to spend your leisure time
Let your trips be driven by deep emotions inspiring rare and wonderful experiences and confirm awareness of our great cultural legacy.
4) Exciting activities to improve group relationship and performance
Team building activities have a fundamental role for companies that aim to improve their own team performances.

“Every great journey starts from a wish… “

Contact us and tell about it and we will help you make your dreams come true.

Credits photo pantarheiwedding.it

L'articolo Why choose Sicily to plan your corporate events? proviene da Sicilytudine.

Stories of “truvature”, big hidden treasures and vain attempts to find them, are part of the rich local traditions.

From a distance the soaring rock with the old monastery on top reminds one of a “meteor”, those turrets with sheer walls typical of the landascape of Thessalia.

It is all around this mountain, known as San Paolino, that the history of Sutera has developed over the centuries.

It is an ancient history with roots in legend of the mythical founder: Dedalus and archeological evidences of the presence of Sicani 6000 BC. The Greeks called it “Soter” which means “safe” for the strategic position controlling the Platani valley.

The Arab presence is reflected in the picturesque “Rabato” district, which means “closed burgh”. Along the narrow and winding alleys wrapped in silence and surrounded by little houses you breathe an old and rarefied atmosphere, as if the time has stopped. The quarter formed around the mosque, built in 875 A.d., a few traces of which are still inside the main church built in 1545 on a previous one of 1370 built by Giovanni Chiaramonte, with a nave and two side aisles with sequin gold decorations and a spectacular fusion of marble and inlays in the baroque style in the Sacrament Chapel.

Every year, at Christmas,  the little streets become the natural scenario for a living crib.

75 broad steps start from Piazza del Carmine and head to Monte san Paolino flanking the rock where stands the sanctuary dedicated to Paolino and Onofrio.Two splendid urns, masterpieces of Sicilian goldsmith art, are kept inside, containing the relics of the two protector saints.  

A walk on the big terrace is a must to enjoy the breathtaking view. Amid bare valleys and little woods you can make out the countours of no fewer than 22 towns and villages in Sicily and the imposing Mussomeli castles.

As you continue your visit of the town, you really do feel as if you were going through an open-air museum with the sensation of going back into past,  into a dimension which is ancient and genuine, in which traditions mantain their charm unaltered.

To keep good memory of all of that, try the gastronomic specialities like : “Pitirri” (a vegetable soup), “maccu” ( bean purèe), “‘mbriulati” focaccias filled with olives, sausage, onions), bread and egg rissoles, Sutera taralli, little ricotta cassatas, easter chickens, “buccellati” (Christmas sweetmeats filled with walnuts, almond and figs).

L'articolo Sutera: a picturesque village at the foot of a giant proviene da Sicilytudine.

In Sicily, the word “vastedda” or “guastedda” refers to a particolar type of squashed bread. Instead, in the Belice Valley, it is a soft and a tasty sheep’s cheese which is the same shape of a “vastedda”. It is unseasoned white cheese with a slightly acidulous taste made with milk from Belice Valley sheep, an ovine breed of outstanding quality, with a pedigree,  that has remote origins and is known nationally for its productive characteristics.

It derives from the cross-breeding of three different species, the Comiso one for the size, the Sardinian one and the “pinzirita” one for the rusticity, its capacity to adapt to difficult environmental situations.

It is important to buy “vastedda” when visiting this part of Sicily to safegard a genuine product with a consolidated relationionship with territory and threatened with extinction.

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L'articolo Europe’s oldest wine road goes through Sicily proviene da Sicilytudine.

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On the footsteps of the British writer S. Butler, who visited Sicily in 1894, we try to guess who she was, where and when she wrote.

There were many poetesses in the earliest ages of Greek literature and there is no ground for refusing the possibility that one of them lived in Sicily around 1000 B.C.
The fact that the recognized heads of literature in the Homeric age where the nine Muses-for and both Iliad and Odyssey begin with an invocation addressed to a woman suggests female authorship the Odyssey there is a preponderance of female interest, a fuller knowledge of things generally a woman deals with. People always write by preference of what they know best, and they know best what they most are, and have most to do with.
Women in the Iliad are few and rarely occupy the stage. The writer of the Odyssey is fierce like a tigress at times, but it is sweetness rather than strength that fascinates us throughout the poem. “It is the charm of a woman not of a man” as P.B. Shelley says (in Selected letters – 1882).

In the Odyssey women are directing, counselling and protecting men in domestic life. There is Minerva, omnipresent at the elbows of Ulysses and Telemachus to keep them straight and she alternately scold and flatter them. In the Iliad she is the warrior, in the Odyssey she is a great woman but not a warrior. Helen is master in the house of Menelaus, Calypsos is the mastermind, not Ulysses and look at Nausicaa, delightful as she is, it would not be wise to contradict her, she knows what is good for Ulysses and all will go well with him so long as she obeys her, but she must be master and he a man.
No woman in the Odyssey is ever laughed at, men are. Woman, religion and money are the three dominant ideas in the mind of the writer of the Odyssey. In the Iliad the belli causa is a woman, in the Odyssey the belli causa is mainly money and women are most in evidence.

Penelope was most probably made more virtuous than she was to preserve female honour as scandalous versions of Penelope’s conduct were current among the ancients. The authoress was most probably a young, unmarried lady. A man would not have made the suitors a band of lovers at all, bringing them at her feet, spoil them and in the end destroy them to exalt her sex. Shall we go further wrong if we conclude that Penelope picked out her web, not so much in order to delay a hateful marriage, as to prolong a very nice courtship instead? After all she has the right to please herself or not?
The authoress chooses to pretend that Ulysses was dying to get back to her, she knew perfectly well that he was in no great hurry to do so, she was not, however, going to admit anything so derogatory to the sanctity of married life, or at any rate to the power which a wife has over her husband.
The poem is such a tour de force as none but a high-spirited, headstrong girl, who had been accustomed to have things done her own way and she had the Iliad in front of her while writing.

Scheria and Ithaca are drawn from Trapani and its surroundings including the Egadi Islands. The voyages of Ulysses practically resolve themselves into a voyage from Troy to the neighbourhood of Sicily and so into a sail round Sicily, beginning with Trapani and ending with the same place at the foot of Mount Eryx that Ulysses reaches in a dark night full of mist, where a cave with a supposed hidden treasure is known till today by locals.

There is the description of the wing in the harbour of Phorcys to the cave in which he hides his presents, up to mt. Neritum along its long top to the spring and the Haven Rock and finally the path passing the hill of Mercury down to Ithaca, as accurately presented to us by the road from the saline of S. Cusumano to the Grotta del Toro on M. Eryx, the fountain, the Raven Rock, and the road to Trapani, as though the Odyssey had been written yesterday.
The Egadi Islands and particularly Asinelli and Formiche could be the Cyclops, as Sican descendants of the people who built the megalithic walls of Eryx.
Favignana is the island where Ulysses hunted the goats and the cave of Poliphemus is on M.Eryx then.
So, who was the writer?
She had for sure the Iliad in front of her and knowledge of the lost Greek epic poems while writing. We have then to find a woman of Trapani, young, fearless, self-willed and jealous for the honour of her sex. She seems to have moved in the best society of her age and country, for we can imagine none more polished on the west coast of Sicily in the Odyssean times than the one with which the writer shows herself familiar.

She must have had leisure, or she could not have carried through so great a work. She puts up with men when they are necessary and illustrious, but she is never enthusiastic about them, and likes them best when she is laughing at them; but she is cordially interested in fair and famous women. We should look for her in the house of king Alcinous where she must have been an intimate member to be able to laugh at his head as much as she chose.
She knows the house and the gardens as much as she likes to describe them as her own. No one else is described wit livingness and enthusiasm like Nausicaa, a product of an early Ionian colony from Corfù (Drepane – sickle).
The poem must be earlier, set the fall of Troy at 1184 B.C by Thucydides, than 734 B.C., so before the foundation of Syracuse by Korinthos.

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I told him to be comforted, because God used poverty often as a means of bringing people to Him. and used riches never, or but rarely. So Giuseppe was comforted ì, and I gave him a little book of devotion, very pretty and with far more pictures than prayers in it;  so of great service to Giuseppe, whose eyes are beautiful. I also gave him many lire,and prophesied for him a Cardinal’s hat, if he remain very good, and never forgot me.

He said he never would: and indeed I don’t think he will, for every day I kissed him behind the high altar.

L'articolo Oscar Wilde in Sicily proviene da Sicilytudine.

This part of Sicily is mostly a regional park where guests’ mind is often geared for small details while wandering an unspoiled upland, carpeted with cyclamen and asphodel, borage and wild orchids and covered by large forests,totally unexpected in a Mediterrenean island. Goatherds share the envinronment with foxes, deer and birds of prey and here, up on the Madonie, you can still hear sheepbells and the deeper clang of cowbells. while tasting a spread of local delicacies, bread and wine, salads and salami, cheese and fruit like sweet blood oranges,  during a picnic under some gnarled old holm oak.     

It is so easy to venture far of the beaten track and, through a gap in the hills ahead, see the Sea, blue and homeric, just as you have imagined it as well as the chief landmark Mount Etna covered in snow.         

Medieval towns and villages, like Gangi, Petralia Soprana, Castelbuono tell how Sicily was tossed down through centuries where cultural brilliance has alternated to exhaustion and decay, and such a past left its mark in castles, narrow streets and concealed courtyyards as well as in the rich interiors of churches and noble palaces. 

L'articolo Wild Flowers and Fresh Snow in Sicily proviene da Sicilytudine.