DK Travel : Sicily : Places of interest

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Madonie Mountains

The Madonie range, featuring Sicily’s highest peaks after Mount Etna, extends from Cefalù inland and is protected by the Parco Naturale Regionale delle Madonie. The park encompasses spectacular countryside, forests of beech, chestnuts, cork oaks, poplars and fir, and tiny villages that time seems to have forgotten. The remote villages that once provided refuge to bandits on the run are now good starting points for mountain hikes, horseback riding, cycling and skiing (see Outdoor Activities).
Market

The market typically bustles with local housewives and vendors yelling out the merits of their wares. Farmers and fishermen heap mussels, tomatoes, cherries or whatever is plentiful into colourful mounds to entice customers.
Marsala

This sunbaked seaside town was founded in 397 BC as Lilybeo by Carthaginians fleeing Motya. It finally fell to the Romans after a 10-year siege, but it was the Arabs who named the city: Marsa Allah, meaning the port of God. Today, the town is best known as the landing point for Garibaldi’s Redshirts (see Giuseppe Garibaldi) and for the wine that borrowed its name. The city survived successive invasions, but came into its own in the 18th century when the Marsala wine trade was born. The Baroque cathedral to San Tommaso di Canterbury presides over a pleasant piazza, where you’ll also find the Museo degli Arazzi with its Renaissance tapestries from Madrid’s Palacio Real (the gift of a Marsala-born archbishop).
Messina

Founded by colonists from Messenia, Greece, the city grew up around the harbour, which has always been its focus. In 1908 Messina was levelled by a disastrous earthquake and tidal wave, although parts of the older city survive. Monuments are concentrated around the magnificent harbour, including the Norman Duomo with original portals and sculpture, a 15th-century fountain in the Piazza Duomo and a clock tower whose mechanized figures come to life at noon, the Santissima Annunziata dei Catalani with its Norman features, the 1572 monument to Don Giovanni of Austria, and the Museo Regionale, with important works by Antonello da Messina (see Antonello da Messina) and Caravaggio.
Modica

Rebuilt after 1693, on and between two deep gorges, the city is dramatically divided in two parts – Modica Alta, the upper town, and Modica Bassa, the lower town. Founded by the Siculi, the city attained great importance under Spanish rule when it was the capital of a quasi-autonomous state ruled by Spanish barons. The lively Corso Umberto I, with boutiques, cafés, pastry shops, numerous palaces and a theatre, crosses Modica Bassa. Also on this street is a monumental flight of steps with excellent Baroque statues of the Apostles that leads up to the post-1693 Duomo dedicated to San Pietro. Up the hill, Modica Alta’s Baroque church of San Giorgio is attributed to Gagliardi. Inside there is characteristic stucco work and 10 beautiful 16th-century wooden panels depicting scenes from the New Testament.
Monreale

On this royal hill (mons reale ) Sicily’s Norman king, William II, built the mosaic-encrusted monastery and cathedral that proved to be the last and most splendid of the island’s Norman monuments (see Monreale).
Morgantina

Morgantina was settled first by the Italic Morganti people, then by the Greeks in the 6th century BC, then the Romans, but it was only excavated in 1955. The extensive, well preserved site comprises a split-level agora (forum) connected by a 14-step staircase that served as the site of town meetings, the macellum (covered market), a gymnasium, a public fountain with a double basin, large black lava millstones, residences with mosaic flooring, a 1,000-seat theatre, an enormous public granary and kilns for firing terracotta. The larger of the two kilns was also used for firing construction materials.
Motya

This archaeological park occupies an entire island in Lo Stagnone, the lagoon north of Marsala, where the 8th-century BC Phoenician and later Carthaginian city thrived. Dionysus I of Syracuse destroyed Motya (Mozia in Italian) in 398 BC, leaving ruins of intricate fortifications, docks, homes decorated with mosaic flooring, and other structures. The extensive archaeological collections of the Museo Whitaker (former home of the English Marsala-producing family) are displayed as Whitaker intended – the highlight is the outstanding Greek marble statue of a youth in a diaphanous pleated tunic (c.440 BC).
Motya

The archaeological park on the island of Motya starts and ends with a short boat ride across the lagoon (less than 10 minutes each way). The park itself is wide open, and offers excellent examples to inquisitive kids of how the Phoenicians and then the Carthaginians lived and fortified their villages. In addition to Motya, all of Sicily’s archaeological parks offer space to run around and usually ruins to climb about on (see Motya).
Mount Etna

Europe’s largest active volcano dominates Sicily – from much of the island it is rarely out of sight and never out of mind (see Mount Etna).