Sicily, Italy
The smoking cone of Etna, the Greek theatre at Taormina and street food markets in Catania and Palermo.
A sample of the properties we quote here. Tell us your dates and we shortlist the right ones for you.
Taormina old town, above the bay
A Four Seasons hotel in a former fourteenth-century convent, with cloister gardens and terraces looking down to the bay of Naxos and across to Etna.
Taormina, beside the ancient Greek Theatre
A Belmond hotel next to Taormina's ancient theatre, known for its long terrace facing Etna and the sea.
Mazzaro bay, below Taormina
A Belmond hotel in a former private villa right on the beach at Mazzaro, linked up to Taormina by the cable car.
Acquasanta, on the bay north of Palermo
A Rocco Forte hotel in an Art Nouveau villa with terraced gardens running down to the sea, a short drive from central Palermo.
Via Roma, central Palermo
A historic hotel in a nineteenth-century palazzo in the middle of Palermo, known for its belle epoque public rooms.
Southern coast near Sciacca
A Rocco Forte resort spread along a private stretch of the south coast, with golf courses, a large spa and olive groves.
Ortigia waterfront, Syracuse
A seafront hotel on the island of Ortigia, the historic core of Syracuse, with a rooftop restaurant terrace over the harbour.
Inside the Valley of the Temples, Agrigento
An eighteenth-century villa inside the archaeological park of Agrigento, with rooms and a pool facing the Temple of Concordia.
We quote these and many more. Prices depend on dates and board — the quote is free and there is no payment on this site.
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, about 25,700 square kilometres, with five million people on it and three thousand years of layered history — Greek, Roman, Arab, Norman, Spanish, Bourbon — stacked in the same towns. It is not a resort. It is a region the size of a small country, and the single most common mistake made booking it is underestimating how far apart its highlights are.
Here are the real road times, because they decide your holiday:
A week with one base and a plan to "see Palermo, Taormina, Syracuse and Agrigento" is a week spent mostly in a car. Either pick one half of the island, or split the week into two bases and accept one long transfer day in the middle.
Outside the centres of Taormina, Ortigia and Palermo, public transport is thin, infrequent and unhelpful with luggage. The interior, the baroque southeast, the temples and the west are effectively car country.
Three things to know before you drive here. First, the old towns have ZTL zones — camera-enforced restricted-traffic areas — and fines arrive by post months later, so never drive into a historic centre without confirming the hotel has a permit or a garage. Second, the A18 along the east coast is a toll motorway and the A19 across the middle is free but rough; both are fine. Third, driving standards are assertive rather than dangerous, and parking in old towns is the real difficulty, not the roads.
If you genuinely do not want to drive, base yourself in Ortigia or Taormina, use the trains along the east coast and take organised day trips. It works, but it limits you to roughly a third of the island.
Catania (CTA) serves the east — Taormina, Syracuse, the southeast, Etna. Palermo (PMO) serves the west — Cefalù, Segesta, Trapani, San Vito Lo Capo. Comiso (CIY) is small and convenient for Ragusa and Noto.
If you want both halves, flying into one and out of the other saves a wasted day. Tell us when you ask for a quote, because it changes which hotels make sense.
The famous one, and it earns it: a medieval town on a terrace 200 metres above the sea, with a Greek theatre looking straight at Etna, and Corso Umberto running through the middle of it.
Now the honest part. Taormina is steep. The town is a set of terraces connected by staircases, the beaches at Mazzarò and Isola Bella are down at sea level and reached by cable car or a long series of steps, and those beaches are pebble, not sand. It is also the most expensive base on the island by a clear margin, and the television exposure of recent years has pushed prices up again. Cars are close to useless there; you park in a paid garage outside and walk.
If you want the view and the atmosphere and are not on a tight budget, it is worth it. If your priority is a beach and a pram, look at Giardini Naxos below it, which is flat, sandy, cheaper and five minutes away.
Working city, black lava baroque, the best fish market in Sicily and an airport you can be at in twenty minutes. It is not pretty in the postcard sense and it is louder and grittier than the rest of the east coast, but it eats extremely well and it is the cheapest good base on the island. Good for one or two nights at the start or end, or for a trip that is mostly Etna and food.
Our most common recommendation for a first visit. Ortigia is the small island that forms the old city: baroque squares, a cathedral built into a Greek temple whose columns are still visible in the walls, a sea-water swimming spot off the rocks, and a compact, walkable, genuinely lived-in centre. The archaeological park at Neapolis with the Greek theatre is a short hop away.
Ortigia has no real beach, which is the trade-off, but Fontane Bianche and Arenella are twenty minutes south.
Rebuilt in one architectural style after the 1693 earthquake, this corner is a set of honey-coloured baroque towns on hilltops, with the best sand on the island below them. Vendicari is a nature reserve with fine pale beaches, San Lorenzo and Calamosche are excellent, and Marzamemi is a former tuna-fishing village that is now the best evening square in the region.
This is the calmest, most family-friendly part of Sicily and the part we suggest to anyone who wants beach plus culture without altitude.
You come for the Valley of the Temples, which is one of the great Greek sites anywhere and better than the photographs suggest, especially at opening time or in the evening light. The town itself is unremarkable and the coast around it is mixed. Most people stay one or two nights and move on. The Scala dei Turchi white cliff nearby has had access restrictions in recent years, so check before you build a day around it.
Palermo is loud, layered and the best street food city in Italy: markets at Ballarò and Capo, Arab-Norman churches, a cathedral, and Monreale's mosaics twenty minutes uphill. Mondello, the city beach, is a genuinely beautiful bay of pale sand fifteen minutes away.
Cefalù, an hour east, is the postcard: a Norman cathedral, a huge rock, a sandy beach and a medieval centre. It is also very busy in summer.
San Vito Lo Capo, Scopello and the Zingaro reserve have the best swimming water in Sicily. Trapani, Erice on its mountain, the salt pans, Segesta's lone temple and the Egadi islands are all here. It is four hours from Catania and one hour from Palermo, which tells you which airport to use.
Etna is about 3,300 metres high, is the most active volcano in Europe, and is genuinely erupting on a regular basis rather than in a museum sense. That is the attraction and the complication.
Summit-area excursions are routinely cancelled at short notice for activity, wind or cloud, and above roughly 2,900 metres you must be with an authorised guide. Ash falls occasionally close Catania airport for a few hours or a day. Neither is common enough to avoid the island, but both are common enough that you should book Etna early in your stay so there is room to try again.
Practical detail people forget: it is cold up there. At 2,500 metres the temperature is often fifteen degrees below the coast, and there is wind. Take a fleece and closed shoes even in August, and take sunglasses because the ash blows.
The south side from Rifugio Sapienza has the cable car and the crowds; the north side at Piano Provenzana is quieter. The lower slopes have the wine — Etna DOC, grown on volcanic soil, is one of the most interesting wine regions in Italy right now.
Sicilian beaches are not one thing.
Around Catania and the Riviera dei Ciclopi the coast is black volcanic rock and lava platforms, with swimming off ladders and concrete rather than sand. Aci Trezza and Aci Castello are dramatic and not for toddlers.
Taormina's beaches are pebble. Giardini Naxos below it is dark grey sand.
The southeast, from Vendicari down to San Lorenzo and around to Sampieri, has fine pale sand and shallow water, and it is the best of the island for children.
The west — San Vito Lo Capo, Scopello, Mondello — has white sand and the clearest water.
The sea reaches about 25-27°C in August, 24-25°C in September and around 19-20°C in June, so the swimming season runs comfortably from June to early October.
Sicily is a small-property market. Family-run bed-and-breakfasts, boutique hotels in restored palazzi, agriturismi and country masserie make up most of the good stock. Large resorts exist but are concentrated in specific places: Giardini Naxos and Letojanni below Taormina, the coast around Cefalù and Campofelice, Brucoli, Sciacca and Selinunte.
All-inclusive is a minority product here and rarely the best value, because eating out in Sicily is cheap and very good. Half-board in a coastal resort makes sense; full all-inclusive usually does not.
At around EUR 70 per person per night in May or October you are looking at a good four-star on the coast with breakfast, or an excellent bed-and-breakfast in Ortigia or Noto. Taormina is well above that in every month. August is above everything, everywhere.
Catania Fontanarossa (CTA) is the main gateway for the east. Approximate road times from the airport: Catania city 20 minutes, Taormina 50 minutes, Syracuse 1 hour, Noto 1 hour 15, Ragusa 1 hour 45, Agrigento 2.5 to 3 hours, Palermo about 3 hours.
To be clear about our role: we quote your accommodation through partner agencies. Our own vehicles and drivers operate in Turkey and nowhere else. A transfer in Sicily is arranged locally by the partner, and we will name the operator rather than let you assume our fleet is involved.
May and June are the best months: 22-28°C, the interior still green, sites walkable in the middle of the day and the sea warming up.
July is hot and busy but manageable on the coast.
August deserves a warning. Inland temperatures reach 35-40°C and Agrigento, Catania and the interior can be brutal. It is also the Italian holiday month, with Ferragosto on 15 August as the peak: beaches full, coastal prices at their maximum, and a good number of city restaurants closed for staff holidays. If you can move to September, do.
September and early October are excellent — the warmest sea of the year, the grape harvest, and prices falling through the month.
November to March is quiet, green and cheap, with 14-18°C days. Sites are empty and beautiful, many coastal hotels close, and it rains. As a food, wine and archaeology trip it is very good value; as a beach trip it does not exist.
Sicilian cooking is its own cuisine, with Arab and Greek layers that mainland Italy does not have.
Eat arancini, the fried stuffed rice balls, and note that they are called arancini in the east and arancine in the west and people care. Eat granita with a brioche for breakfast — almond, coffee, pistachio or mulberry — which is the single most Sicilian thing you can do. Eat pasta alla Norma in Catania, pasta con le sarde in Palermo, fish couscous in Trapani, cannoli filled to order rather than in advance, and pistachio from Bronte on anything.
Palermo street food is a destination in itself: panelle, sfincione, arancine and, for the brave, spleen sandwiches. Wine is worth attention — Etna DOC reds from Nerello Mascalese, Nero d'Avola in the southeast, Grillo whites in the west, and Marsala where it comes from.
If you want one hotel, one beach and no logistics for a week, Sicily will frustrate you. Turkey and Greece do the single-base beach week better, cheaper and with less driving.
If you cannot manage steps and slopes, be careful: Taormina, Ortigia, Ragusa Ibla, Erice and Modica are all built on hills and stairs. The southeast coast and the flat resorts below Taormina are the workaround.
If you are travelling in August with small children and heat is a problem, the interior is genuinely too hot and the coast is genuinely full.
And if you refuse to drive, accept that you will see the east coast and very little else.
Sicily quotes badly from a website because the answer depends on how you have arranged the week — one base or two, coast or town, Taormina or not — and those choices move the number far more than the star rating does.
Tell us your dates, how many of you, whether you are hiring a car, and whether you want beach, baroque towns, Etna or all three. A consultant comes back within one working day with a route that does not waste days, two or three properties in the right places, the board basis spelled out and an honest note on steps, parking and transfer times. The quote is free, it commits you to nothing, and no payment is taken on this site — the partner agency issues the booking and the voucher.
Almost certainly. Outside the centres of Taormina, Ortigia and Palermo, public transport is thin and awkward with luggage, and the baroque southeast, the temples and the west are effectively car country. Watch for ZTL restricted zones in old towns, where camera fines arrive months later by post.
Further than people expect. Catania to Taormina is about 50 minutes, to Syracuse an hour, to Agrigento two and a half to three hours and to Palermo about three. Taormina to Palermo is around three and a half hours. A one-base week covering all four corners is a week in the car.
For the view and the atmosphere, yes. Be aware it is the most expensive base on the island, the town is a set of terraces linked by staircases, and the beaches below at Mazzarò and Isola Bella are pebble and reached by cable car. For beach and prams, Giardini Naxos underneath is flat, sandy and cheaper.
Yes, and they are, at short notice, for volcanic activity, wind or cloud. Above roughly 2,900 metres you must go with an authorised guide. Ash occasionally closes Catania airport for a few hours. Plan Etna early in your stay so you have a second chance, and take warm clothing even in August.
The southeast, from Vendicari down to San Lorenzo and around to Sampieri. Fine pale sand, shallow water and flat ground, with the baroque towns of Noto and Modica nearby. Around Catania the coast is volcanic rock and lava platforms, and Taormina is steep with pebble beaches.
It is the hardest month. Inland temperatures reach 35-40°C, it is the Italian holiday month with Ferragosto on 15 August at the peak, coastal prices are at their maximum and some city restaurants close for staff holidays. September gives you the warmest sea of the year with far fewer people.
No. There is no checkout on this site and the quote costs nothing. If you accept an offer, payment goes directly to the partner agency that operates the booking and issues your voucher, and that agency is named in the offer before you commit to anything.
No. Our own vehicles and drivers operate in Turkey only. Any transfer in Sicily is arranged locally through the partner agency, and we will tell you who is providing it rather than let you assume our fleet is involved.
Rates here move a lot between low and high season, so we quote each request individually rather than publish a number that would be wrong most of the year.
Free, non-binding, answered by a person.
