Itineraries
Two days in Catania, on foot
You can cross the centre of Catania in twenty minutes. Which is exactly why it is worth walking it slowly, over two days rather than one.
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All issuesCatania is described as a city of black stone, and it is. But that black stone is basalt, and basalt holds heat: anyone who arrives in summer and tries to do everything on the first day works this out around midday, on via Etnea, when the street begins giving back the sun it has taken.
This itinerary comes from one simple fact: the centre of Catania is small. From the Bellini Garden to the fish market is a twenty-minute walk. What takes time is not the moving between things — it is the stopping.
Day one: start high, then walk down
Begin at the Bellini Garden, which locals call 'a Villa. Come in through the gate on via Etnea and climb straight up: from the terraces at the top you see Etna above the rooftops, and at that hour the city is still quiet. It is also the most honest way to understand the geography of Catania in five minutes, before descending into it.
From there take via Etnea downhill. It is the street everyone walks, and it should be walked, but leave it often: the side streets and the courtyards towards via Crociferi are where the city stops posing.
Via Crociferi is worth the detour: two hundred metres, four baroque churches, and a silence you will not find anywhere else in the centre. Under the arch of San Benedetto, the story goes, you should hold your breath. Nobody does, but everybody slows down.
You come out in piazza Duomo, with the elephant fountain — u Liotru, the city's real emblem — and then, just behind it, the Pescheria. The fish market closes mid-morning: arrive at one in the afternoon and you will find a washed square and laid tables, which is another lovely thing, but it is not the market.
If there is a moment when Catania is precisely itself, it is the fish market at nine in the morning, water on the ground and voices bouncing off the walls.
In the afternoon, at the worst hour, stay indoors: the Benedictine Monastery is the second-largest Benedictine complex in Europe and today it is the university. The guided tours are run by students, which is exactly why they are worth taking.
Day two: neighbourhoods, not monuments
The first day is the postcard. The second is the one you remember.
- San Berillo, where the walls are painted and the neighbourhood is rewriting itself. Walk it in daylight, unhurried.
- The Teatro Massimo Bellini and the streets around it, for the evening aperitivo.
- The Roman theatre, wedged between the buildings of via Vittorio Emanuele: you enter through a narrow door and find yourself inside a cavea.
- La Playa, or else the train to Acireale: half an hour, and the Timpa cliffs drop straight into the sea.
On the last evening, weather permitting, go back up — a terrace, a flight of steps, anywhere the mountain is visible. Etna at sunset changes colour three times in twenty minutes, and no photograph has ever caught it.
Practical notes
The distances are short but the paving is uneven: bring real shoes. The airport bus (Alibus) passes along via Etnea every twenty minutes and takes a quarter of an hour. Parking in the centre is a genuine problem: if you are driving, choose somewhere that tells you where to leave the car before you set off.
And one thing you only discover by staying two days instead of one: in Catania you eat better at lunch than at dinner, and for half the price.