Catania

A city rebuilt on lava seven times

Catania sits at the foot of Mount Etna, and it has a relationship with that mountain no other Italian city has with its own: it has been buried by it. The 1669 lava flow reached the sea straight through the town, the 1693 earthquake levelled what was left, and the city you see today is the one rebuilt immediately afterwards — baroque, all of a piece, laid out by Giovanni Battista Vaccarini on a grid of wide straight streets designed to let people escape the next disaster.

The material is the lava itself. Dark volcanic stone alternates with the white limestone of Siracusa across the facades, producing a striped baroque that looks like nothing on the mainland. The old centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002, together with the other late-baroque towns of the Val di Noto rebuilt after that same earthquake.

How the city is laid out

Piazza del Duomo is the exact centre: the cathedral of Sant'Agata, the Palazzo degli Elefanti that serves as the town hall, and between them the fountain with the lava-stone elephant that Catanians call the Liotru — the animal is Roman, the obelisk on its back is Egyptian, and together they are the city's emblem. From here Via Etnea runs three kilometres due north with the volcano always at the end of the street; it is the city's promenade, lined with historic cafés and eighteenth-century palaces.

Behind the cathedral you drop down into the Pescheria, the fish market: one of the most photogenic places in Europe and one of the loudest, with slabs of tuna, swordfish, sea urchins and sardines on ice and the sellers calling across to one another. It opens early and is done by mid-morning. A little further on, the Roman theatre is wedged between houses: you enter through a small door on Via Vittorio Emanuele and find yourself in a second-century cavea surrounded by balconies with washing hung out. The nightlife is around Via Teatro Massimo and the lanes between Piazza Bellini and the Pescheria, and it is the liveliest on the island.

What makes Catania different

It is a working city, not a postcard — a port, an ancient university, a real commercial centre — and that makes it less polished than Taormina and far more alive. Above all it is the logistical base of eastern Sicily: Fontanarossa is the busiest airport on the island and lies five kilometres from the centre, Etna is an hour away, Siracusa an hour, Taormina fifty minutes, the Aeolian Islands two hours via Milazzo. Anyone landing here is already in the middle of everything.

Then there is the food. Pasta alla Norma — tomato, fried aubergine, salted ricotta, basil — was born here and takes its name from the opera by Bellini, who was born in Catania. At the market you eat pane e panelle and cartocciate; in the pastry shops, the minne di Sant'Agata, glazed little cakes tied to the feast of the patron saint that moves hundreds of thousands of people over three days in early February. And here granita is breakfast, with a brioche col tuppo.

Practical notes

The centre is walkable: from Piazza del Duomo to Piazza Stesicoro is ten minutes up Via Etnea. Cars in the centre are a problem — restricted traffic zones, little parking — so it is better to leave them outside. From the airport to the centre is a few kilometres and barely a quarter of an hour by road; it is the shortest journey we run in Sicily, and also the one that catches the late flights, when public connections thin out.

The climate is hot and dry: 11–16 °C in January, 17–24 °C in spring, 25–33 °C in July and August — with peaks above 40 °C when the sirocco blows off the desert — and long mild autumns. Etna changes everything within a few dozen kilometres: at Rifugio Sapienza, 1,900 metres up, it can be fifteen degrees colder with snow from November to May, so take a jacket even in summer. Restaurants keep Italian hours, and in Catania dinner starts late and finishes later.