Coastal towns
Coastal towns in Sicily
18 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.
Castelmola
Province: Messina · 529 m
A rock village at 529 meters directly above Taormina, the upper acropolis of ancient Tauromenium with a Norman castle and a 1947 almond-wine bar.
Forza d'Agrò
Province: Messina · 420 m
A ridge village of 835 people at 420 meters above the Ionian, its Norman fortress silhouette gave the place its name centuries before a film crew arrived.
Castroreale
Province: Messina · 394 m
A ridge town at 394 meters above the Milazzo plain, holding the royal name given to it in the fourteenth century and a second-place finish in the 2018 Borgo dei Borghi.
Savoca
Province: Messina · 300 m
A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian, its ridge lined with stepped lanes and balconied stone houses.
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.
Giarre
Province: Catania · 81 m
An Etna town that split from Mascali in 1815 and built a neoclassical duomo, with two bell towers framing the volcano behind it.
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.
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.
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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.