Coastal towns
Coastal towns in Sicily
14 towns
Towns on the sea. A cliff town high above the water counts here rather than under mountains, because the sea is why you would go.
The towns
Forza d'Agrò
Province: Messina · 420 m
A ridge village of 930 people at 420 meters above the Ionian, its Norman fortress silhouette gave the place its name centuries before a film crew arrived.
Taormina
Province: Messina · 204 m
A terrace on Monte Tauro above the Ionian, with Etna on the southern horizon.
Castelvetrano
Province: Trapani · 187 m
The Belice valley town that owns Selinunte, the largest archaeological park in Europe, and bakes black bread from grain found in its tombs.
Realmonte
Province: Agrigento · 153 m
The Agrigento coast commune with the white marl cliff of the Scala dei Turchi and a salt mine carved into 5-million-year-old halite.
Menfi
Province: Agrigento · 119 m
Sicily's triple-signal western coast town: 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of protected sand at Porto Palo, backed by cellars and olive groves that between them carry Italy's three major small-town quality marks.
Pachino
Province: Siracusa · 65 m
One of Sicily's southernmost towns, on the Capo Passero promontory, and the name behind the Pomodoro di Pachino PGI cherry tomato.
Sciacca
Province: Agrigento · 60 m
A terraced fishing harbor on Sicily's southwestern coast, built on a spa town of the fifth century BC and a ceramics center since the fourteenth.
Siracusa
Province: Siracusa · 17 m
Ortigia island, wrapped in honey-coloured Baroque stone, sits at the heart of the city Cicero called the most beautiful in the world, on the eastern Sicilian coast south of Catania.
Cefalù
Province: Palermo · 16 m
A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded in 1131.
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.
Catania
Province: Catania · 7 m
Sicily's second city and the cultural anchor of the Ionian coast, a UNESCO late-Baroque centro storico rebuilt in lava-black stone after the 1693 earthquake, sitting at the foot of Etna with a 17th-century elephant fountain (U Liotru) as its civic symbol.
Riposto
Province: Catania · 6 m
The Ionian port whose name comes from the Sicilian for cellar, where the wine of Mascali and Giarre was stored before shipping.
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.
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.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Rapolano Terme
Province: Siena
A Sienese thermal town of 38-degree calcium-sulphur waters and travertine quarries feeding facades beyond its borders.
Baunei
Province: Ogliastra
A village at 480 meters on the Monte Santo limestone ridge, its territory holding a national-monument beach and a trek regularly called Italy's hardest.
Omegna
Province: Verbano-Cusio-Ossola
The Lake Orta town at 295 meters where Bialetti, Lagostina and Alessi turned a steel valley into Italy's household-goods capital.
Montecassiano
Province: Macerata
A walled hill borgo north of Macerata, whose Collegiata holds a seven-meter glazed terracotta altarpiece by fra' Mattia della Robbia.
Isola del Gran Sasso d'Italia
Province: Teramo
At 415 meters at the foot of a massif holding the Apennines' highest peak outside Sicily, the commune's sanctuary ranks among the world's fifteen most-visited Catholic shrines.