Editor’s note: I spent ten days in Milan back in 2023, and I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed my time and all the city had to offer. It is wonderful to read that our writer Sam Spector also enjoyed his time in Milan, even though he had only a single day.…
In recent decades, Sicily has become a top tourist destination. And really, why not? Mediterranean coastline, mild winters and hot summers, good food and wine, fascinating ancient history and some reasonably exciting more modern stories as well… what else could a traveler want? Add to that reasonable prices in comparison to most of Western Europe,…
It is impossible to speak of one without speaking of the other: Catania, Sicily’s second largest city with a metro population around a million, and Etna - called Mama Etna by the locals - the mighty volcano towering over it. For as long as there have been humans present in eastern Sicily, Mt. Etna has…
I wasn’t planning to write about this. When I travel, I tend to outline what I feel my articles will be. So when my Sicily tour scheduled a morning to visit a Roman villa, I thought, ‘I’ve seen Roman villas before. This won’t be exciting enough to write about. I’ll focus on Greek and Phoenician…
Can there possibly be a more Italian activity than this? The steep streets of Modica in southeastern Sicily are too narrow for most cars to pass. But not these. I’m in the fourth car of an eight car convoy touring the hilly old city, bouncing along with mere inches of room on either side as…
Well, it isn’t a valley. That is my first thought upon arriving at Sicily’s top tourist attraction, the Valley of the Temples. Rather, the three temples I’ll visit on the day are on a ridge. Odd, right? My second thought is, quite simply, wow. The ridge from where I stand to another temple The Valley…
On my recent Sicily tour, our group’s day in Syracuse was one I was looking forward to. Syracuse has a rich history, being one of the most powerful Greek city-states, home to the famed Archimedes, and even serving as the capital of the Byzantine Empire for a brief period. What I found, while not bad…
In approximately 800 BCE, a highly sophisticated culture of navigators and traders from what is now Lebanon landed on the northeastern tip of Sicily. They built a trading colony on a small island in the middle of a shallow lagoon. For the next 400 years, Motya (Mozia in Italian) would be one of the most…
Would I turn my father in? That’s the question going through my head as I listen to Angelo Provenzano talk, part of my Sicilian tour’s commitment to controversial topics, this one being on the mafia. Angelo is the son of Bernardo Provenzano, former boss of the Cosa Nostra, the Corleone-based mafia here in Sicily. Would…
Gina isn’t exactly a normal welcome ambassador to a town. But then again, Castelbuono isn’t exactly a normal town. Unlike many hilltop - or hillside - towns in Sicily, Castelbuono is not just surviving, but thriving. So many similar towns are so desperate for people to move there that they offer houses for €1, as…