The best towns you can reach by train that eat well within 90 minutes of Catania

Castiglione di Sicilia

Why visit Castiglione di Sicilia

The town looks down the Alcantara river valley between Randazzo and Taormina, its position fixed by Norman count Roger I, who documented it in 1092 as Castrileonis, the great castle. That name still fits the territory more than the town itself: the commune's boundary runs uphill from the historic centre all the way to the summit of Etna, taking in the north-east crater, so the same municipality holds a huddle of streets at 621 meters and a stretch of active volcano above it.

The hills below the centre are the heart of the Etna DOC. Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio grow on the volcanic soils around the village, with Carricante carrying the whites, and bottles from Cottanera, Passopisciaro, Tenuta delle Terre Nere and the Alcantara producers all ship from here.

Twenty minutes downhill the Alcantara has cut its gorges through the same lava that feeds those vineyards, basalt walls shaped by water where the fields above are shaped by the grape. Town, castle, vineyard and gorge read as one continuous volcanic system, worked over centuries into a fortress, a wine region and a river cut.

Cave Ox, La Riserva Bistrot have been named by a guide.

What to see in Castiglione di Sicilia

• Castello di Lauria. The fortress stands on its basalt outcrop above the town, its walls carrying the weight of two rebuildings by Ruggero di Lauria's crews. The rooms now hold the Enoteca Regionale for eastern Sicily, so the same stone that once watched for approach up the valley now stores the bottles made from the vines below it.
• Cuba Bizantina di Santa Domenica. Small Byzantine cube-shaped church, seventh to ninth century, in the rural outskirts of the commune, one of the oldest surviving structures in the Etna area.
• Gole dell'Alcantara. Basalt gorges carved by the Alcantara river through prismatic lava columns, around twenty minutes downhill from the centro storico.

How to get to Castiglione di Sicilia

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Catania is roughly 49 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Castiglione di Sicilia

Randazzo

Why visit Randazzo

Randazzo sits at 750 meters on the northern foot of Etna, seventy kilometers northwest of Catania along the Alcantara valley. Byzantine in origin, Swabian and medieval in character, the town has three great churches that mark its three historic quarters, once inhabited by communities that spoke different tongues: the Latins in Santa Maria, the Greeks in San Nicolò, and the Lombards in San Martino.

In 1210 Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and his young wife Constance of Aragon sheltered here from the plague in Palermo; Randazzo became, after Palermo and Messina, one of the most populous towns on the island. The architecture is lava: Santa Maria Assunta, begun in the thirteenth century, has a façade entirely in black volcanic stone with three polygonal apses shaped as towers and Catalan-Gothic side portals.

The forty-one-meter bell tower of San Martino, called one of the most beautiful in Sicily, has stood since the thirteenth century.

Veneziano, San Giorgio e il Drago have been named by a guide.

What to see in Randazzo

• Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta. Thirteenth-century basilica in black lava stone with three polygonal apses shaped as towers and fifteenth-century Catalan-Gothic side portals.
• Chiesa di San Martino. Church of Swabian origin from the thirteenth century with a forty-one-meter bell tower in four storeys, anchor of the Lombard quarter.
• Chiesa di San Nicolò. Largest of the three quarter churches, repeatedly rebuilt; the fourteenth-century bell tower fell in the 1693 earthquake.

How to get to Randazzo

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Catania is roughly 60 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Randazzo

Taormina

Why visit Taormina

The town sits at 204 meters on the rock above the coast, on the Ionian shore halfway between Messina and Catania. The Siculi welcomed the survivors of the Greek colony of Naxos in 358 BC after Dionysius of Syracuse destroyed it, and Andromachus refounded them as Tauromenium on the height above.

Augustus later made it a Roman colony, deporting much of the population and resettling it with Roman families. The centro sits below the fortress and above the sea: the Arab-Norman stronghold occupies the rock at 397 meters, while further up the hillside the frazione of Castelmola hangs at 884, both looking down on the same stretch of coast the theatre faces.

The small island reserve lies at the opposite end of that vertical arrangement, at sea level below the cliff, reached by cable car or path from the town above. A place built in tiers, from the beach at the base to the fortress on the rock to the village above that, all of it oriented toward the same view of the volcano and the water that made a nineteenth-century travel writer's description enough to start a tourist route still followed today.

St. George by Heinz Beck, La Capinera, Vineria Modì and 11 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Taormina

• Teatro Antico. The stone rows face south, so the audience looks past the stage wall to Etna rather than toward it. 109 meters in diameter, the remodelling under Roman rule widened the space for spectacle beyond Greek drama.
• Palazzo Corvaja. Fourteenth-century Sicilian-Gothic palace at the entrance to Corso Umberto, on the site of the Roman forum and the Arab cube of the citadel.
• Castello di Monte Tauro. Arab-Norman fortress at 397 meters on the rock above the centro, reached on foot from Via Circonvallazione.

How to get to Taormina

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Catania is roughly 45 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Taormina

Riposto

Why visit Riposto

Riposto sits on the Ionian coast twenty-five kilometres north of Catania, at the eastern foot of Etna and the southern edge of the Giarre-Riposto conurbation. The name is commercial: u ripostu in Sicilian, the cellar, because the wine produced in the surrounding county of Mascali was stored here before being loaded onto ships.

The town was the commercial port of Mascali from the sixteenth century onwards, won full administrative autonomy in the eighteenth, and was merged with neighbouring Giarre under the name Jonia from 1939 until 1945, when the two split again. Today the Porto dell'Etna, also called Marina di Riposto, runs as a combined tourist marina, fishing port and small commercial harbour.

Locals still call the town the port of the volcano. Etna fills the western skyline, the railway runs to Catania along the coast, and the historic centre threads between churches built when the wine trade still paid for them.

Zash, La Cucina di Donna Carmela, Vico Astemio have been named by a guide.

What to see in Riposto

• Porto dell'Etna. The combined tourist marina, fishing and commercial port, the largest pleasure harbour between Catania and Messina.
• Chiesa Madre San Pietro. The mother church on the main square, rebuilt in the eighteenth century when Riposto's wine trade financed new construction.
• Centro storico. Grid of streets parallel to the seafront, with palazzi and warehouses built during the eighteenth and nineteenth century wine boom.

How to get to Riposto

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Catania is roughly 29 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Riposto

Aci Castello

Why visit Aci Castello

Aci Castello sits ten kilometres north of Catania on the Riviera dei Ciclopi, where the lava-black basalt coast meets the Ionian Sea. The town's anchor is the Castello Normanno (Castello d'Aci), built in 1076 by Roger I of Sicily on a basalt sea-stack thrown up by an underwater Etna eruption around 25,000 BC; the Aragonese expanded it in the 14th century and it now houses the Civic Museum of Aci Castello.

Just offshore stand the Isole dei Ciclopi — the seven basalt sea-stacks that Homer identified as the rocks Polyphemus the Cyclops hurled at Odysseus's ship in Book IX of the Odyssey, and which are now a protected marine reserve. The frazione of Aci Trezza (the larger fishing village south of the castle) is where Giovanni Verga set I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree, 1881), the founding novel of Italian verismo.

The coastline between Castello and Trezza is a single black-pebble swimming front, with the dramatic profile of Etna rising behind.

Faraglioni Restaurant have been named by a guide.

What to see in Aci Castello

• Castello Normanno di Aci. 1076 Norman castle on a basalt sea-stack thrown up by an underwater Etna eruption c. 25,000 BC. Aragonese expansion 14th c. Houses the Civic Museum with the stratigraphic and natural-history collections.
• Isole dei Ciclopi. Seven basalt sea-stacks offshore — Homer's Cyclopean rocks from Odyssey Book IX. Now a protected marine reserve (AMP Isole Ciclopi), with snorkelling tours from Aci Trezza.
• Aci Trezza — terra di Verga. Fishing-village frazione where Giovanni Verga set I Malavoglia (1881), the founding novel of Italian verismo. The old harbour and Casa del Nespolo museum trace the literary setting.

How to get to Aci Castello

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Catania is roughly 12 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Aci Castello

Giarre

Why visit Giarre

Giarre sits on the lower eastern slope of Etna at eighty metres, thirty kilometres north of Catania and three from the sea at Riposto. From the late sixteenth century until 1815 it was a village of the county of Mascali; it separated after the abolition of feudalism and built itself a town centre in the decades that followed.

The Duomo di Sant'Isidoro Agricola, begun in 1794 and opened for worship in 1818, is the result: a neoclassical mother church in white stone, with a large central nave, two lateral naves, a transept, and a dome with lantern. The two bell towers, designed by the Neapolitan architect Pietro Valente, were begun in 1859 and finished only in 1890.

Inside, the church holds one of the most substantial collections of sacred silverware in eastern Sicily. From 1939 to 1945 Giarre was merged with Riposto under the fascist name Jonia.

The two towns still form a single conurbation along the coast.

Cioccolateria e Caffetteria Fabbrica Finocchiaro, Casu Osteria Contemporanea have been named by a guide.

What to see in Giarre

• Duomo di Sant'Isidoro Agricola. Neoclassical mother church begun in 1794, two bell towers by Pietro Valente, and one of eastern Sicily's largest collections of sacred silverware.
• Piazza Duomo. The main square at the centre of the historic grid, with the duomo facing the foothill of Etna to the west.
• Corso Italia. The principal axis of the town, running between the duomo and the open country towards Riposto and the sea.

How to get to Giarre

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Catania is roughly 26 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Giarre