Moving north along the coast, the small town of Acireale is the best place to celebrate Carnevale, while the long beach at Giardini Naxos was home to the first Greek colony on the island. Taormina is expensive and touristy, but still undeniably pretty. The view of the coast and Etna from the Greek Theatre is awe-inspiring. At the top of the island, Messina has enough to keep visitors interested for a day or so, while Milazzo is the humping off point for ferry and hydrofoil services to the Aeolian Islands.

Between Messina and Palermo, Cefalu is second only to Taormina as the island's package holiday centre, with a huge cathedral clinging to the rock next to a sandy beach.

You'll need at least a couple of days to see Palermo properly. If you're pushed for time, don't miss the Royal Apartments at the Palazzo dei Normanni or the fantastic Norman cathedral in nearby Monreale.

West of Palermo, Trapani, and Marsala are interesting coastal towns, but the highlight is Erice, a quiet medieval town with a wonderful hilltop location.

Agrigento is a little out of the way but well worth visiting for the wonderful Valle dei Tempi. Farther east, the Baroque towns of Ragusa, Modica, and Noto are rewarding day trips.

South of Catania, Siracusa is a must-see, with a huge Greek theatre and the fascinating island of Ortigia. Just inland, there are some interesting Greek remains in Akrai, near Palazzolo Acreide.

Finally, Sicily's interior has several interesting towns, such as hilltop Enna, Caltagirone, and the Roman villa outside of Piazza Armerina.

Quick Tips:

The best time to visit Sicily is between March and May and September to October. The summer months can be unbearably hot and the island is deluged with domestic tourists.

Best of Sicily is probably the most comprehensive source of online information. Italy Heaven is another useful site.

Sicily has inspired some great works of literature. Leonardo Sciascia's The Day of The Owl and Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb deal with the Mafia's influence on the island. Also highly recommended are Lampedusa's The Leopard and In Sicily by Norman Lewis.

Best Way To Get Around:

You'll need your own transport to see Sicily properly, especially the interior of the island. Public transport is cheap but services are slow and rarely integrated, making day trips difficult. Sunday services are skeletal at best.

Railway services from the mainland dock at Messina, heading west to Palermo and down to Siracusa via Catania. There are secondary lines from Siracusa to Noto, Ragusa, and Gela, inland from Catania to Enna and Caltanissetta, and along the coast from Palermo to Trapani and Marsala. The island's most scenic railway journey is the Circumetnea, which loops around Mount Etna.

AST, Interbus, Etna Transporti, and SAIS run buses around the island. You can find a list of bus operators for each province here.

A dead silence hangs over the area, interrupted only by the rustle of the wind through the long grass behind and the birdsong from the drooping trees in front. Duck down through the tunnel in the centre for the adjoining Bouleuterion, a tiny amphitheatre hidden below the high stone walls that once housed the meetings of the local government on its three rows of steps. A short flight of stairs on the right leads back up to the main theatre if you can’t face the low ceilings in the tunnel again. In the fields beyond the locked gate the beginning of the Plateia – the main street of the ancient Greek town – is clearly visible.

Back towards the park entrance, turn right when you reach the path and take the steps that branch off almost immediately for the Latomia Intogliata. Most of the area is sealed off but several of the smaller caves, which were used as limestone quarries during the construction of Akrai, are still accessible. The ruins of the Temple of Aphrodites, dismantled during the Middle Ages, are invisible at the top of the hill across a wild, grassy valley. Take the main path again, winding past honeycombed rock faces used by the early Christians as catacombs and the ancient Greeks for the worship of the dead. Centuries old rectangles and smooth squares cut deep into the rock, propped up by rounded arches and chiselled columns. A bas-relief detailing the ‘Heroes’ Banquet’ is carved on to a long stretch of rock. Although weatherbeaten and rough in places the detail is nonetheless remarkable.

Back to the entrance. Down the slopes of the present day road to Noto, Via Primosole, which winds left downhill from Piazza Acre, quarries once used for festivals linked to the cult of the dead dot the hillsides and the Santoni (Big Saints), a set of twelve bas-reliefs hewn out of a 30-metre long section of rock, are to be found. All feature Cybele, the goddess of fertility, standing alone, seated with lions or surrounded by barely discernible figures. The workmanship is badly eroded but totally engrossing.

The town’s main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele III, begins to the left of the town hall. At the end of the street, Piazza Acre opens out either side of signs pointing right for panoramic views and left for the Greek Theatre and archaeological area of Akrai. The promised panorama does not disappoint – a crumbling terrace 50m from the piazza, revealing a couple of deserted winding roads, a corner of ageing roofs angling lazily up a hill, acre upon acre of cultivated fields, and sloping rock faces interspersed with tall green puffs of foliage. If you can ignore the pack of barking dogs in the nearby gardens, continue up the bank to the next corner where an even more impressive vista unfolds: a beige-walled, red-roofed jumble back across the valley, only the pale blue sky and a blur of hillsides beyond.

Back to Piazza Acre, head for the brown Zona Archeologica sign and walk uphill through the terraced park behind the war memorial and turn left at the top onto the stepped pavements of Via Tearto Greco. The entrance to the archaeological park is at the top of this steep hill.

Follow Via Acre from the piazza of the same name back in the direction of the town centre as far as Piazza San Michele, then turn right into Via Carlo Alberto, which eventually culminates at Piazza del Popolo. Follow the slope down Via Nicola Zocco, which intersects Via Garibaldi a couple of hundred metres downhill. Turn left and follow the street past the wonderfully elongated Baroque balcony at Palazzo Zocco, all fancifully decorated with swirling patterns and grotesque figures. Reaching Piazza Umberto I, continue to the top of the square and look left for the Chiesa di San Paolo. Its facade rises in three levels through a number of friezes and ten sculptures up to a glorious belfry. You can enter the church through a side door on the left, though the interior is extremely unremarkable. Follow Via Roma from the stairs up to the nearby Chiesa Madre back to Piazza Umberto I. On the other side of the piazza, Via Annunziata leads to the oldest of the town’s churches, the Chiesa dell’Annunzia, which dates from 1400 and was extensively rebuilt in the 18th century. Its wheat-coloured portal is flanked by two spiralling Spanish baroque columns decorated with friezes of flowers and ripe summer fruit.

The living room is similarly plain, clustered and functional. A sturdy double bed is overlooked by a large crucifix and yet more devotional pictures of saints.. A round container in one corner used to preserve wheat and a small statue of Saint Sebastian in another. A copper brazier, a baby’s chair, old family photos, musical instruments and a crescent shaped table complete the decorations.

Through to the stables, where animal harnesses drop from the walls above sickles, ploughs, hoes and a fodder trough. Decorated cattle collars reach from the ceiling down to the hard stone floor. Then it’s into the oil mill, dominated by a large millstone that was pulled by a blindfolded mule. The crushed olives were put in sacks and pressed again to produce enough oil for food, fuel and soap. Another press, this time manually operated, was used to produce a second-rate honey which was sold to wax modellers for the production of candles and religious figures.

The next room is the small warehouse, which is currently home to a sun-dried clay and papier mache model representing the surrounding countryside. Wax statues and 19th century glass paintings are displayed alongside terracotta figurines made in Catania. Through the arched portico to the second courtyard and then into the main warehouse. Where once the harvest was stored now temporary exhibits such as waxworks, pottery, costumes and jewellery crowd the room. Finally, the old stable and its cobbled floor thought to date back to the 17th century housing toys and folk theatre posters, wrought iron carts and small puppets.

Spread over a single room, the exhibits begin with prehistoric pottery, flints and rocks arranged in glass display cases. Accompanying text details the area of origin and the date unearthed.

Into Kamarina, where huge burial urns are arranged in a mock chamber beside painted jars with warriors on horseback and various animal decorations. Jars and cups abound, all in various shades of brown and decorated with intricate figures. Statue fragments and some wonderful small sculptures are arranged in cracked, eroded rows. Though most are over one and a half thousand years old the original detail can still be discerned in the vast majority.

A large stonework shows a horse surrounded by flowing text, while plain pottery crowds into cases next to more ornate work and some stone guardian figures from nearby burial chambers. Hundreds of cups and jars stand in rows, with the occasional sculpted head poking out of wide handles and circular brims. Flat-topped vessels decorated with foliage and grazing animals loom over thousands of less remarkable pottery housed on the floor and behind the cases themselves.

Three large busts of Greek deities lead us to photos of excavation sites and multitudes of heads without bodies and torsoes without limbs behind more glass. Then it’s on to two large Roman floor mosaics, the first of which has smoothly eroded islands of nothingness between swirling floral patterns that spread out in every direction. Adjacent, and even better, the second mosaic features different varieties of birds arranged in three rows of five squares with symmetrical floral designs in between. Both are roughly three by six metres. A scale model of the building in which they were found stands nearby, its proximity to the encroaching waves is amazing.

A visit takes about 40 minutes.

Walk up the stairs to the left and you can enter the building through the side door. The interior is full of huge oil paintings and wooden panels depicting scenes from the martyrdom of St. George. Divided into three naves by ten massive pillars, the cathedral took over 50 years to build. Twenty stained glass windows and the dome – neoclassical in design, 43m high, and inspired by the Pantheon in Paris – let in light, bathing statues, the sculpted altar, and the pipe organ (3368 pipes!) in sunlight.

Back out on the stairs, continue up and to the right for views of the dome framed by rolling hills and deep blue skies. Then go back down and continue through Piazza Duomo and along Via Aprile 25 to Piazza Pola, where the rounded San Giuseppe is another Gagliardi masterpiece. Buses back to town stop here just after every hour, while the surrounding streets are full of bars, restaurants, and ancient buildings. Via Aprile continues to the very edge of town, passing the plain Chiesa Santa Maria on its way to the grand Piazza G. Battista Odierna. Gates open to a palm tree lined path and the gardens surrounding the Convento dei Cappucini and Chiesa San Giacomo. Flowers, fir trees, a children’s playground, and wide lawns lead to the very edge of the rock spur. Then it’s back along the deadly quiet streets; the only sound is of shoe leather on stone pavement.

The station is small and unremarkable. A bar, a platform, a ticket office and a car park, and, of course, the ubiquitous coating of graffiti. Outside the station, city buses stop directly in front of the ugly memorial while AST and Etna coaches stop and pick up just to the left, running to Siracusa, Palermo, Modica, Catania and Catania Airport. Tickets are available from the bar in the station.

Turn left out of the station and follow the main road along to the large Piazza Liberta. Continue straight ahead and over the bridge into Via Roma, which stretches from the monolithic Mediterranean Palace Hotel to the end of town. The Archaeological Museum is directly below the hotel (signposted), while the city’s cathedral is located about 200m farther up Via Roma at the junction with Corso Vittorio Veneto. Aside from these, there is little of interest in modern Ragusa – the small churches you can find on either side of Via Roma can be bettered in most other Sicilian towns, though they are still interesting enough to warrant a closer look if you have time on your hands.

The cathedral, finished in 1774, stands on a wide terrace above a sparse piazza. A sombre door is flanked by tapered columns with a large bell tower on the left hand side ending in a cusp. Dedicated to St. John, the cathedral is surrounded by well-kept gardens, though everything was locked up for the duration of the day I spent in the city.

The cathedral itself, a stern, angular structure is a reconstruction of the original 13th-century Norman structure. The only decoration is in the 17th-century Renaissance portal, surmounted by a small rosette and flanked by two arched windows. The cavernous interior has three naves and inlaid marble floors stretching below painted wooden ceilings to an ornate altar overlooked by a huge painting of the city’s protector, Madonna della Lettera. Below Europe’s third largest pipe organ are grand marble columns melting into imposing stone arches, numerous tombs, inlaid altars, oil paintings, and 14 elaborate marble statues of major saints. On the right hand wall, a small opening leads to The Treasure of the Cathedral museum (€3, open 9am - 1pm and 3:30pm - 6:30pm April to October and 9am - 1pm Monday to Saturday, 10am - 1pm and 4pm - 6:30pm on Sundays between November and March). A collection of four hundred artifacts is held in the four rooms that form the museum, among them a rock crystal lamp dating from 969AD, a 14th-century silver gilt chalice, silver and gold crowns, engraved gold plates, a statue of St Rosalia donated by the people of Palermo in 1673, an altar frontal in embossed silver plate on yellow silk, bronze gilt altar crosses, and a chalice donated by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of his visit to the city in 1988.

The cathedral is a ten-minute walk from here along Via Primo (I) Settembre, which runs diagonally from the top right hand corner as you exit the train station passing Santa Maria d’Alemanna, the abandoned last vestige of Sicilian Gothic architecture, built for the Order of Teutonic Knights in the early 13th century. A slightly longer, though by recompense a more scenic route, is to continue past the tourist information office and then take a left into Via L. Rizzo, which runs away from the entrance to the ferry terminal. This curves round the harbour, affording clear views of Calabria and the Madonna del Porto, a six foot high golden statue of Mary erected on a 60m column at the entrance to the port. At the end of the curve the street becomes the Via Vittorio Emanuele II and the Catalan Church is visible across the parallel Via Garibaldi.

Directly behind the church, Don Giovanni d’Austria stands with a parchment one hand, the hilt of his sword in the other, and the severed head of the vanquished Admiral of the Ottoman Fleet under his heel. The cathedral is just a minute away on the other side of Piazza Catalini.

Back outside, cross Piazza Duomo and turn left into Via Cavour. Keep looking right as you walk further on and the Chiesa S.S. Salvatore comes into view at the top of a side street, a wonderful mix of cream and striking columns. Follow the steps to the right of the church, continue up a second flight on the left and then turn right when you reach the road at the top and wind your way downhill to the Fontana Falconieri, occupying the centre of an unremarkable circular piazza and first constructed in 1842. A long flight of steps leads up to the Montalto Sanctuary. From the terrace in front the whole city appears between the mountains behind and the hills of Calabria over the water. The dome of Cristo Re crowns a hilltop to the left; in front, the tall campanile and squat cathedral rise in a large gap between buildings and ferries plot slow triangular courses across the straits in and out of the harbour beyond. The mainland city of Reggio di Calabria clings to the base of the folding hills in the distance and planes begin their slow descent into Catania further down the east coast. Trees rustle in the wind and the occasional car horn blares, but all else is silent and remote from this height down below the flat rooftops and across the gently rippling water.

The few steps across the courtyard are flanked by a three-metre high Greek column from the nearby Temple of Apollo, smaller stone fragments fixed to walls with rusting brackets, and a long 1483 relief carving of Saint Lucia and two accompanying angels, their facial expressions warped by centuries of erosion. A path to the right of the fourth room – locked on all my visits – circles a small lawn and two towering palm trees. Coats of arms tilt from the surrounding walls and a room to the left houses temporary exhibitions.

Room Five - at the top of the staircase and immediately to the right of the entrance - holds just two paintings in a high-ceilinged, slightly off-white coloured space of bare neutrality. A small wooden bench faces Antonello da Messina’s ‘Annunciation’ across a low rope. Against a backdrop as vague as a passport photograph, the damaged painting is as aged and wrinkled as old skin, the patches of erosion lending it a resemblance to an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. What remains of the work is a masterpiece of fine detail, most of which is highlighted in enlarged sections on an adjoining wall.

Pedro Serra’s ‘Madonna and Child’, mounted on a vivid scarlet board that almost touches the ceiling, features a dramatically oversized mother and baby adorned with gold and towering over peripheral figures with an expression of utter serenity.

Walk across the corridor to room six, a dimly lit rectangle of gold - flecked paintings and Giovanni da Rimini’s six scenes showing ‘The Transfiguration of Christ’. Carvaggio’s ‘The Burial of Saint Lucia’ has a wall to itself. Lit from the bottom, the high painting is at once bathed in light and shrouded in darkness. The martyred saint lies half hidden on the floor, the bent limbs and lowered heads of two gravediggers in the foreground framing her illuminated head in a wide circle of light. View the painting from the far wall first, then advance to the rope where hidden background figures slowly appear out of the shadows.

The great earthquake of 1908 destroyed more than just buildings, and the modern town, stymied by years of neglect and under investment, hollowed out by mass emigration, and entangled by the malign tentacles of the ‘ndrangheta, owns to its deflation in every bare piazza, litter strewn back street and graffiti coated wall.

From the steel gates at the port (regular hydrofoil services glide across the Straits from Messina) a long and featureless road extends past the grey Hotel Continental to a small area of gravel strewn grass on which immigrant children stare into the middle distance as they rock back and forth on incongruously colourful fairground rides; their parents stick to the peeling benches behind, listless eyes fixed on the final centimetres of cigarette held tightly between their yellowing fingers. The road widens as I approach the messy metal tangle above the stairs down to the underground Lido train station, and an abandoned octagonal building to the right with smashed windows and grimy walls blocks a corner of the view back across to the half-lit hillsides of Sicily, a shade of blue darker than the cloudless sky and a hazy smudge above the sparkling sea. A wooden stairwell spirals down to the narrow beach, running in a gradual curve to the south past the mid-afternoon joggers, young couples on stone benches and old men staring out at silhouetted fishing boats.

Stay on the main road until it bends to the right at Piazza Indipendenza. If you’re impatient you can cross now, passing the dark green ice cream kiosk and a clump of tall palm trees on the short uphill walk to Piazza de Nava and the Museo Nazionale. If not, follow the curve of the road into what the fascist fantasist D’Annunzio called "the most beautiful kilometre in Italy."

A wide sweep of parallel streets split in two by a line of palm trees and park benches, Reggio’s lungomare (seafront) runs straight on to the horizon, facing Sicily on one side and bleakly anonymous buildings on the other. Some low Greek walls, uncovered in 1913, run periodically along the centre near an ancient Roman thermae resembling the bomb damaged remains of a smashed suburb – small mounds of red brick enclosed by a high metal fence. Keep your head turned to the right as far as Athena’s Monument, a narrow rectangular arch of marble facing a concrete amphitheatre which marks the landing of King Vittorio Emanuele III in the town. D’Annunzio’s kilometre grinds to a halt here, irrevocably ruined by the screeching sound of brakes and the thick mass of overhead cables as trains ascend for the final curve before Reggio Centrale.

Cross the road for the Villa Communale-public gardens offering nothing but shade and a few tacky fairground rides-or leave the seafront behind and continue on to the train station, an insipid shell of a building that houses a tourist information office clearly inspired by late Soviet era department stores. Unless you’re taking in a football game at the Stadio Communale – where Reggina currently maintain a precarious existence in Serie A – there’s really no need to go any further south. Cross the piazza, turn left at McDonald’s, and start the long march along Corso Garibaldi.

There are times in a journey when you feel yourself trapped, held in place by transport schedules that give you twice as long in a place as you’re ever likely to need. Overheating in the afternoon sun, passing closed shops and potholes, each step took me nearer to the end but further into the middle. Piazza Duomo opens to the right – deserted stalls, a bus queue and an inauthentic looking child’s toy of a cathedral with too bright walls and too small windows. Cross the square, turn left into Via Campanella and then right into Via Castello for the slightly more interesting Aragonese Fortress. Semi-ruined and almost 1,500 years old in places, the high towers look down on a scruffy park dotted with middle aged men enjoying an outdoor siesta.

Hurry back down to Corso Garibaldi, turning right and continuing past Piazza Italia- ripped up by archaeological excavations at the foot of a statue of Italy calling her sons to the cause of national unity-in the direction of the Museo Nazionale.

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM AND THE WARRIORS OF RIACE

Excluding the walk along the seafront, the National Museum would probably rank as number one of one on most objective lists of reasons to visit the city. Most of the museum’s collection comes from the 235-hectare site at Locri, including the carved terracotta tablets from the sanctuary of Persephone depicting episodes of her abduction by Hades, god of the underworld, and a wonderful array of bronze mirrors, terracotta statues, Greek and Roman coins, funerary implements and thirty-nine tablets showing the judicial system of the city. Artefacts come from every Greek colony in Calabria – vases, mirrors, ceramics and utensils from Reggio, Matauros, Krimissa, Medma, Kaulonia and Laos, while the art gallery holds two Antonello da Messina masterpieces. But the real highlights are downstairs.

The Warriors of Riace were discovered off the coast of Calabria in 1972. Lying eight metres below the surface, and visible merely by a single arm sticking out of the sediment, the two bronze statues were sculpted in the 5th century BC and lost when their transport ship sank. The larger of the two statues stands just over two metres high and weighs 250 kilos. Youthful and muscular, he strides forward with a head half turned in a gesture of defiance against an unknown opponent. The detail of his facial hair and muscle structure is extraordinary, set off by copper lips and breastplate and inlaid eyes and teeth. The smaller statue is of an older man, more contemplative and less defined. The raised left shoulder and the anatomy of his back dates the sculpture to the period around 420BC, approximately thirty years after the first warrior was completed. The position of the hands and arms suggest that both were originally carrying weapons, though only a single shield handle was discovered intact.

Nearby is the Philosopher’s Head, an intense head without a body discovered in another Greek shipwreck with a furrowed brow between arched eyebrows and a visibly receding hairline. Completed by narrowed eyes, a hooked nose and a long, wavy beard, the face is wonderfully engrossing.

ADMISSION 5 euro

OPENING TIMES 9-1.30 and 3.30-7 daily.

PRACTICALITIES

There’s really no need to stay overnight in the city unless you arrive late and plan an early morning start to Sicily or the Aspromonte Massif. By far the best place to stay is the Hotel Mundial on Via Gaeta (just to the right as you exit Reggio Centrale). The telephone number is 0965 332255.

Hydrofoils from Reggio are for foot passengers only. If you’re taking a car across to Sicily, you’ll need to take a ferry from Villa San Giovanni.

Get off the train at Reggio Lido station for the port and museum.

The City Pride Pub (599 Corso Garibaldi) seemed to be the most popular in town.

There’s an internet café on Via de Nava just to the left as you exit the museum. There’s also a small supermarket a little further on.