Taormina

Founded by Greeks and enlarged by Romans, the theatre frames Etna and the coast through the broken wall behind its stage. Summer still brings concerts and a film festival, and on show days daytime visiting hours shrink. Late afternoon, with low light, is best.

The car-free main street crossing town from Porta Messina to Porta Catania, the sea below the terrace of Piazza IX Aprile (9 April Square) halfway. At evening stroll time the crowd carries you. Past the chequered paving and clock tower is the oldest quarter.

A tiny island tied to the beach by a strip of sand when the water drops, and as a nature reserve its garden takes a ticket. The beach is pebbles, so water shoes help. From town you ride the cable car down to Mazzaro beach and walk over.

A village on the rocky summit above Taormina, reached by bus or a steep footpath. From the ruined castle you look down on Taormina and the coast. The ritual is a tiny glass of almond wine at a cafe on the village square.

A garden laid out by Florence Trevelyan, an Englishwoman who settled here as the 1800s closed, with odd brick follies she built for watching birds standing among the trees. From benches on the seaward rail Etna is in view. Admission is free.

A river runs between basalt cliffs that cracked into hexagonal columns as the lava cooled. The water stays icy even in midsummer, numbing your feet at knee depth. Waders can be hired for a route through the stream, and a park lift drops you to the bottom.

A hill village up the coast, where Bar Vitelli, the bar in The Godfather where Michael meets Apollonia, is still open on the same spot. Photographs from the shoot hang inside, and it sells lemon granita. The Capuchin monastery above the village keeps mummies.

The shore where Greeks founded Naxos in 734 BC, their first colony on Sicily; a small archaeological park keeps foundations of its walls. Now it is the long beach resort below Taormina, the place to come down to for sand.

A small church tucked into a cliff-face cave behind town, reached by about 20 minutes of zigzag stone stairs. At each turn the roofs, the ancient theatre and the sea spread wider below. The climb has little shade.

A mansion grown from an Arab-era tower with Norman and Gothic parts added, where the Sicilian parliament met in 1410. Bands of black lava and white stone frame its windows. It sits beside the 9 April Square, an easy stop in passing.

A Roman brick wall over a hundred metres long, lined with big niches, in a lane below Corso Umberto. Its name means mock sea battle, but it really propped up a large cistern and fronted a fountain. You see it walking the narrow street alongside.

A 13th-century cathedral crowned with battlements like a fort, and in front a baroque fountain of 1635. On top stands a female centaur with just two legs, an odd figure that became the town's emblem. After dark locals gather on the fountain steps.

A rocky headland jutting out north of Isola Bella, riddled with half-submerged caves. Little motorboats from Mazzaro beach nose into the cave mouths, where the water glows blue. Each skipper narrates the names of the caves and what the rocks resemble.

A medieval town of black lava stone on Etna's north flank, reckoned the nearest to the summit craters. Several lava flows halted just short of it. The Circumetnea railway from Catania curls half round the volcano, past lava fields and vineyards.