Where to Base Yourself in Eastern Sicily

For a week in eastern Sicily, pick one base and take day trips out of it. The distances are short enough: from Taormina you can reach Etna in about an hour and Syracuse in an hour and a half, and from Catania you are an hour from Syracuse and an hour from the volcano. Changing hotel every two nights costs you a morning each time, and mornings are the good part of the day here.

This article is about towns, not about places to sleep. Which town you choose changes the trip more than which building you book.

One base or two?

Seven days: one base. Taormina or Catania, with Etna, Syracuse and the coast as day trips.

Ten days: two. A week on the Ionian coast, then three or four nights down in the baroque southeast, around Ragusa, Modica or Noto, so that the interior is not a three hour round trip. Our eastern Sicily itinerary sets this out day by day.

Fourteen days: add the west, Palermo and Agrigento, and accept that the island is bigger than it looks on a map.

Taormina

A small hill town above the sea at about 200 meters, with a Greek theater looking at Etna, a single main street, and a view that has been famous since the eighteenth century.

Good for: evenings, walking, the theater, day trips (Etna about 65 minutes, Catania about 50, Syracuse about an hour and a half), and being somewhere beautiful without needing to drive to it.

Less good for: midday, when the cruise groups and day trippers arrive and the main street becomes a queue; prices, which are the highest in eastern Sicily; and parking, which is a genuine problem if you rent a car.

How many days is enough? Two or three to see the town itself, including Castelmola above it, and as many more as you want it as a base.

Which part to stay in: the historic center if you want to walk out of your door into it, the slope toward Mazzarò and the sea if you want quiet and the cable car, and the coast at Giardini Naxos if you want the beach and a lower bill. Our journeys use Taormina as their home base, which tells you what we think of it as a place to come back to at the end of a day.

Catania

A real city of 300,000 people at the foot of the volcano, built out of black lava stone, loud, cheap and alive. It has the airport, the train station, the bus hub and the fish market, which is the best single hour of street life in eastern Sicily.

Good for: food, markets, baroque architecture on a grand scale, nightlife, prices, and getting anywhere without a car.

Less good for: quiet. Catania is a working city, with traffic and noise and stretches that are shabby rather than pretty.

Catania or Palermo? They are on opposite ends of the island, four hours apart by road, and the choice is really east or west. Catania for Etna, Syracuse, Taormina and the baroque southeast; Palermo for the Norman and Arab heritage, Monreale, the markets and the western coast. For a first trip of a week, most people who come for the volcano and the Greek sites are better served in the east.

Syracuse and Ortigia

The island of Ortigia is the most romantic place to sleep on this coast: a dense, walkable old town surrounded by water, with a cathedral built inside a Greek temple and the sea at the end of every street.

Good for: evenings, dinners, the archaeology, and the baroque southeast, since Noto is about 40 minutes away and Ragusa about an hour and a half.

Less good for: Etna, which is two hours away, and Taormina, an hour and a half. If the volcano is the reason you came, do not sleep here.

Our guide to ancient Syracuse covers what there is to see, and Ortigia, Noto and Modica covers the baroque towns around it.

The Etna side: Acireale, Riposto, Zafferana

The towns on the volcano's flanks are where Sicilians go when they want the mountain without the coast crowds. Acireale is a baroque town of real quality with almost no foreign visitors, about fifty minutes below the southern crater area. Riposto and the villages above it are in the middle of the Etna wine country, our guide to which is here.

Good for: the volcano, the wine, quiet, value, and being among Sicilians.

Less good for: anyone without a car, and anyone who wants to walk to dinner past a view.

The baroque southeast

Ragusa, Modica, Noto and Scicli are the towns rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693, and the countryside around them is the emptiest and most surprising in eastern Sicily. From Taormina it is a serious drive, about two hours and twenty minutes to Ragusa, which is why this area works as a second base rather than a day trip.

Good for: architecture, food, the Hyblaean countryside, farm stays with real farms attached, and prices well below the coast.

Less good for: public transport, which is thin, and beaches, which are half an hour away rather than underfoot.

Which base has a beach

Taormina's beaches are below the town at Mazzarò and Isola Bella, reached by cable car or by a steep road, and they are small and busy in summer. Giardini Naxos, next door on the flat, has the long sandy one. Catania's own beach, the Playa, is a wide strip of sand south of the city, with the rocky Scogliera to the north. Syracuse has small beaches within reach and better ones south toward Fontane Bianche and the nature reserve of Vendicari, half an hour to forty minutes away. The Hyblaean interior has no beach at all, and the coast below it, around Punta Secca and Marina di Ragusa, is a twenty to thirty minute drive.

If a beach within walking distance is a requirement, say so before you pick a base, because in this part of Sicily it rules out several of the best towns.

Arrivals, departures and the airport

Catania's airport is the gate for all of this, and it is worth planning the first and last nights around it. Taormina is about an hour away by road and there is a direct bus; Syracuse is about 55 minutes by car and well served by coaches; Ragusa is about an hour and forty.

A late arrival is easier in Catania, where you can be in the old town twenty minutes after landing, and an early departure is easier from anywhere on the coast than from the interior. If your flight lands after dark and leaves at dawn, put the first and last night in Catania and the middle of the trip wherever you actually want to be.

A short answer, if you want one

First trip, one week, no car: Taormina, or Catania if you prefer a city.

First trip with a car, ten days: Taormina or the Etna side for five nights, then Ortigia or Ragusa for four.

Returning traveler: the Hyblaean countryside, and take the car.

Where our journeys sleep

Both of our Sicilian journeys use Taormina as a home base for the whole week, with the driving done for you: Etna and the wine country, the farm day in the Hyblaean hills, Syracuse and Ortigia, Castelmola, and Catania on the Amber route or Syracuse on the Jasmine one. Eight days, four to eight guests, always accompanied.

If you would rather split your nights differently, or stay somewhere else entirely, that is what Design your trip is for: tell us how you like to travel and we will tell you honestly where to sleep.