With events
Sagre and feste in Sicily
18 towns
Each town page lists what happens there and the month it happens in, with the source. Always check with the town before you travel.

Novara di Sicilia
Province: Messina · 650 m
A stone village at 650 meters where the Peloritani meet the Nebrodi, with a UNESCO-listed cheese race tumbling down the main street at Carnival.

Aci Castello
Province: Catania · 15 m
A coastal town just north of Catania on the Riviera dei Ciclopi, where the basalt headland holds the 1076 Norman Castello d'Aci and the seven volcanic Faraglioni dei Ciclopi rise from the sea — the rocks the Cyclops threw at Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.

Calascibetta
Province: Enna · 691 m
A promontory town at 691 meters facing Enna across a ravine, founded in the ninth century as a Muslim camp to besiege Byzantine Henna.

Caltagirone
Province: Catania · 611 m
Sicily's ceramic capital at 611 meters on the Erei ridge, 142 majolica-tiled steps to Santa Maria del Monte and a Val di Noto UNESCO baroque rebuild.

Castelbuono
Province: Palermo · 423 m
A Madonie town at 423 meters around the Ventimiglia castle, where manna is still tapped from ash trees and Fiasconaro bakes the panettone.

Cefalù
Province: Palermo · 16 m
A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded in 1131.

Gangi
Province: Palermo · 1,011 m
A Madonie hill town stacked in concentric rings at 1,011 meters, RAI's Borgo dei Borghi 2014 and the launching pad for the one-euro-house programme.

Geraci Siculo
Province: Palermo · 1,077 m
A Madonie ridge village at 1,077 meters, capital of the Ventimiglia marquisate from 1258 and the first marquisate granted in Sicily.

Ispica
Province: Ragusa · 170 m
A Val di Noto Baroque hilltown on the southern Iblei plateau anchored by the 13-km Cava d'Ispica canyon with its 3,000+ rock-cut tombs and prehistoric dwellings — one of the largest cave-necropolis sites in the Mediterranean.

Marsala
Province: Trapani · 3 m
Sicily's westernmost city, born from the Phoenician refugees of Mozia, where Garibaldi landed in 1860 and English merchants invented Marsala wine.

Modica
Province: Ragusa · 296 m
A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.

Monreale
Province: Palermo · 310 m
Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.

Montalbano Elicona
Province: Messina · 907 m
A Nebrodi castle town at 907 meters, Frederick III of Aragon's summer residence and gateway to the Argimusco megalithic plateau.

Pachino
Province: Siracusa · 65 m
Sicily's southernmost town, on the Capo Passero promontory, and the name behind the Pomodoro di Pachino PGI cherry tomato.

Petralia Soprana
Province: Palermo · 1,147 m
The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.

Petralia Sottana
Province: Palermo · 1,000 m
A Madonie village at 1,000 meters, the only Bandiera Arancione in Sicily, and the headquarters of the Parco delle Madonie.

Salemi
Province: Trapani · 446 m
The Trapani hill town where Garibaldi raised the tricolor on 14 May 1860 and proclaimed Salemi the capital of Italy for a day.

San Vito Lo Capo
Province: Trapani · 5 m
A three-kilometer white-sand beach at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover

Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.

Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.

Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.

Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.

Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.
