SICILY · ITALY
A live volcano, Greek temples, and the sea.
From the craters of Mount Etna to the temples of Agrigento, Palermo’s markets to the coves below Taormina. The tours, day trips and experiences that make the most of Italy’s biggest island.
Only in Sicily
Three things you can only do in Sicily.
Coastline and old towns turn up all over Italy. A volcano you can stand on, Greek temples better preserved than Greece’s, and a street-food capital do not.
Europe's great volcano
Mount Etna
Etna is the main event: 3,300 metres of live volcano, steaming above the east coast and erupting most years. Take the cable car and a 4x4 up to the summit craters, walk cooled lava fields and lava caves, then taste the wine grown on its black slopes. Nowhere else in Europe puts you this close to an active volcano.
- 1 Mount Etna: Guided Volcano Summit Hiking Tour with Cable Car
- 2 Catania: Sunset Jeep Tour of Mount Etna and Lava Flow Caves
- 3 Sicily: Etna and Alcantara Gorges Full-Day Tour with Lunch
Greater than Greece
The Valley of the Temples
Sicily was once Magna Graecia, and its Greek ruins outshine much of Greece itself. Agrigento lines up a row of Doric temples along a ridge above the sea, the Concordia among the best preserved anywhere. Add the clifftop theatre at Taormina and the vast one at Syracuse, still staging plays after 2,500 years.
- 1 Agrigento: Valley of the Temples Skip-the-Line Sunset Tour
- 2 Palermo: Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples Day Tour
- 3 Agrigento: Valley of the Temples Ticket & App Audioguide
A street-food capital
Palermo's Markets
Palermo is one of the great street-food cities on earth, and it knows it. Push through the Ballaro and Vucciria markets for arancini, panelle and pane ca' meusa, finish on a cannolo filled to order, and wash it down at a hundred-year-old kiosk. Then do it all again in Catania's roaring fish market.
- 1 Palermo Original Street Food Walking Tour by Streaty
- 2 Palermo: Street Food and History Walking Tour
- 3 Palermo: Street Food Walking Tour with Local Guide & Tasting
The one everyone books
Start with the day everyone books.
The single experience more travellers book than anything else in Sicily. If you only plan one day before you fly, make it this one.
The classics
Sicily's Most Popular Tours & Day Trips
Etna excursions, Palermo street-food crawls, boat trips out to the islands and skip-the-line tickets for the ancient sites. The days most travellers book first.
Where to begin
The days a Sicily trip is built around.
Mount Etna, the ancient cities, the islands and the food. The handful of experiences most Sicily trips are planned around, and the best of each.
The big question
Which side of Sicily?
Sicily is bigger than it looks, a good three hours end to end, so the first decision is where to base yourself. Here is how the island splits, and what each side does best.
Wine on a volcano
Vines in the black soil of Etna.
On Etna’s northern slopes, old vines grow straight out of volcanic ash, fed by mineral-rich soil and big day-to-night temperature swings. The reds from Nerello Mascalese and the crisp Carricante whites have turned Etna DOC into one of Europe’s most talked-about wine regions. Spend a day touring the family cantinas, tasting between old lava flows with the sea on the horizon.
Read the guide: Etna wine tours →Sicily on film
Where The Godfather was shot.
Coppola couldn’t film in Corleone, so he used the hill villages above Taormina instead. Bar Vitelli in Savoca, where Michael asks for Apollonia’s hand, still serves almond granita in the same square; Forza d’Agrò supplied the church and the streets. Half a day inland drops you straight into the trilogy, through some of the prettiest medieval villages on the island.
See the Godfather tours →One island, many worlds
Greek, Roman, Arab, Norman, and entirely Sicilian.
Everyone who mattered in the Mediterranean took Sicily, and each left something behind: the Greeks their temples, the Romans their mosaics, the Arabs gardens and street food, the Normans gold-tiled cathedrals. Three thousand years on, the island has folded all of them into something that is only itself.
Browse the best of Sicily →Islands off the island
Sicily comes ringed with islands.
North of the coast lie the Aeolians, seven volcanic islands where Stromboli throws sparks into the night sea and Lipari’s coves glow turquoise. West, off Trapani, the Egadi islands have some of the clearest water in the Mediterranean. Most run as day trips by hydrofoil or boat, and each is worth clearing a day for.
- 1 From Trapani: Cruise to Favignana and Levanzo with lunch
- 2 Boat Tour Egadi Day discover Favignana and Levanzo from Trapani
- 3 From Trapani: Favignana and Levanzo Mini Cruise with Lunch
Around the island
Pick a corner of Sicily.
Taormina for the views and the theatre. Palermo for the markets and the mosaics. Catania at the foot of Etna. Syracuse and Ortigia for the Greeks, Agrigento for the temples, and the Aeolians for the volcanic islands.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
A boat trip if you want the coast and the caves. A cooking class or street-food crawl if you came to eat. Plus wine tours on Etna, hikes up the volcano, snorkelling, and walking tours of the old towns.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time on the island? A long weekend on the east coast that strings together the volcano, the ancient sites and the sea.
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