Sicily

Aci Castello

Province: Catania

A coastal town just north of Catania on the Riviera dei Ciclopi, where the basalt headland holds the 1076 Norman Castello d'Aci and the seven volcanic Faraglioni dei Ciclopi rise from the sea — the rocks the Cyclops threw at Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.

Agira

Province: Enna

On the slopes of Monte Teja at 650 meters, birthplace of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus and burial site of 490 Canadian soldiers of the 1943 campaign.

Buccheri

Province: Siracusa

The highest village in the province of Syracuse at 820 meters on Monte Lauro, world capital of Tonda Iblea olive oil at the 2015 Sol d'Oro.

Calascibetta

Province: Enna

A promontory town at 691 meters facing Enna across a ravine, founded in the ninth century as a Muslim camp to besiege Byzantine Henna.

Caltagirone

Province: Catania

Sicily's ceramic capital at 611 meters on the Erei ridge, 142 majolica-tiled steps to Santa Maria del Monte and a Val di Noto UNESCO baroque rebuild.

Cammarata

Province: Agrigento

A Sicani town at 700 meters on the northeast slope of Monte Cammarata, the 1,578-meter peak that gives the comune its name and shape.

Castel di Lucio

Province: Messina

A Nebrodi village at 750 meters on the borderline of three provinces, with a Ventimiglia castle from 1090 and a Fiumara d'Arte sculpture by Paolo Schiavocampo.

Castelbuono

Province: Palermo

A Madonie town at 423 meters around the Ventimiglia castle, where manna is still tapped from ash trees and Fiasconaro bakes the panettone.

Castelmola

Province: Messina

A rock village at 529 meters directly above Taormina, the upper acropolis of ancient Tauromenium with a Norman castle and a 1947 almond-wine bar.

Castelvetrano

Province: Trapani

The Belice valley town that owns Selinunte, the largest archaeological park in Europe, and bakes black bread from grain found in its tombs.

Castiglione di Sicilia

Province: Catania

A hill town on the north flank of Etna at 621 meters, base camp for the Alcantara valley and the volcano's most serious red wines.

Castroreale

Province: Messina

A ridge town at 394 meters above the Milazzo plain, rebuilt by Frederick II of Aragon in 1324 as a royal demesne and second in the 2018 Borgo dei Borghi.

Catania

Province: Catania

Sicily's second city and the cultural anchor of the Ionian coast — a UNESCO late-Baroque centro storico rebuilt in lava-black stone after the 1693 earthquake, sitting at the foot of Etna with a 17th-century elephant fountain (U Liotru) as its civic symbol.

Cefalù

Province: Palermo

A Norman cathedral at the foot of a 270-meter rock on the Tyrrhenian coast, founded by Roger II in 1131 and on the UNESCO Arab-Norman list since 2015.

Corleone

Province: Palermo

A town of 10,364 in the Palermo hinterland that gave its name to Mario Puzo's Don Vito and now runs Italy's national antimafia documentation centre.

Erice

Province: Trapani

An Elymian mountaintop city at 751 meters above Trapani, with a Norman castle on the site of the temple of Venus Erycina and a Cold War physics centre.

Favignana

Province: Trapani

The largest of the Egadi Islands off western Sicily, anchored by the Florio family's late-19th-century industrial tonnara that ran one of the Mediterranean's most famous tuna fisheries, with calcarenite cliffs above turquoise sea (Cala Rossa, Cala Azzurra, Bue Marino) instead of beaches.

Ferla

Province: Siracusa

A baroque village at 500 meters on the Monte Lauro slopes, the western gateway to the UNESCO necropolis of Pantalica eleven kilometers downhill.

Forza d'Agrò

Province: Messina

A ridge village of 835 people at 420 meters above the Ionian, the Norman fortress town Coppola used in 1972 to stand in for Mafia-era Corleone.

Gangi

Province: Palermo

A Madonie hill town stacked down Monte Marone at 1,011 meters, RAI's Borgo dei Borghi 2014 and the launching pad for the one-euro-house programme.

Geraci Siculo

Province: Palermo

A Madonie ridge village at 1,077 meters, capital of the Ventimiglia marquisate from 1258 and the first marquisate granted in Sicily.

Giarre

Province: Catania

An Etna town that split from Mascali in 1815 and built a neoclassical duomo, with two bell towers framing the volcano behind it.

Ispica

Province: Ragusa

A Val di Noto Baroque hilltown on the southern Iblei plateau anchored by the 13-km Cava d'Ispica canyon with its 3,000+ rock-cut tombs and prehistoric dwellings — one of the largest cave-necropolis sites in the Mediterranean.

Lampedusa e Linosa

Province: Agrigento

Italy's southernmost comune, three islands on the African continental shelf, closer to Tunisia than to Sicily.

Lipari

Province: Messina

The largest Aeolian island and the only municipality that administers six of the seven, with a clifftop castle citadel rising above two harbors.

Marsala

Province: Trapani

Sicily's westernmost city, born from the Phoenician refugees of Mozia, where Garibaldi landed in 1860 and English merchants invented Marsala wine.

Menfi

Province: Agrigento

Sicily's triple-signal western coast town — 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of Bandiera Blu sand at Porto Palo, with the Federico II tower, the Cantine Settesoli cooperative (Italy's largest by volume, 2,000 grower-members), and the rare Bandiera Blu + Città del Vino + Città dell'Olio combination.

Mezzojuso

Province: Palermo

An Arbëreshë village on the slope of Rocca Busambra, two mother churches (one Latin, one Byzantine), and an Arabic name meaning the houses of Joseph.

Modica

Province: Ragusa

A vertical Baroque city in the Hyblean Mountains, rebuilt from the 1693 earthquake and home to a chocolate recipe brought from Aztec Mexico.

Monreale

Province: Palermo

Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.

Montalbano Elicona

Province: Messina

A Nebrodi castle town at 907 meters, Frederick III of Aragon's summer residence and gateway to the Argimusco megalithic plateau.

Nicolosi

Province: Catania

The southern gateway to Etna at 698 meters, twice destroyed by the 1669 eruption, base camp for the volcano cable car at Rifugio Sapienza.

Nicosia

Province: Enna

A Byzantine-Norman royal city at 720 meters on four hills, one of Sicily's principal Gallo-Italic centres where the Lombard dialect nkoukkà still survives.

Noto

Province: Siracusa

The capital of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt in golden limestone after 1693 and the UNESCO showcase for the Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto.

Novara di Sicilia

Province: Messina

A stone village at 650 meters where the Peloritani meet the Nebrodi, with a UNESCO-listed cheese race tumbling down the main street at Carnival.

Pachino

Province: Siracusa

Sicily's southernmost town on the Capo Passero promontory (further south than Tunis), home of the Pomodoro di Pachino PGI cherry tomato and the historic terroir for Nero d'Avola wine, with the Riserva Naturale Vendicari just up the coast.

Palazzolo Acreide

Province: Siracusa

The Iblei plateau's UNESCO Baroque + Greek twin — 8,000-resident hilltop town at 670m, founded over the Greek Akrai colony (664 BC), rebuilt entirely in late Baroque after the 1693 earthquake (inscribed on the Val di Noto UNESCO listing 2002), with the original Greek theatre + the unique Santoni rock carvings of Cybele just outside the modern centro.

Pantelleria

Province: Trapani

A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.

Petralia Soprana

Province: Palermo

The highest village in the Madonie at 1,147 meters, RAI Borgo dei Borghi 2018 winner, sitting above 80 kilometers of salt tunnels.

Petralia Sottana

Province: Palermo

A Madonie village at 1,000 meters, the only Bandiera Arancione in Sicily, and the headquarters of the Parco delle Madonie.

Piana degli Albanesi

Province: Palermo

The principal Arbëresh town of Sicily at 720 meters, founded in the fifteenth century by Albanians fleeing the Ottomans and still speaking arbëresh.

Polizzi Generosa

Province: Palermo

A Madonie town at 917 meters inside a UNESCO Global Geopark, hazelnut country and the birthplace of Domenico Dolce.

Ragusa

Province: Ragusa

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Two cities in one on a Hyblean plateau at 502 meters, Ragusa Ibla and Ragusa Superiore split by a ravine after 1693, both UNESCO Baroque.

Randazzo

Province: Catania

A medieval town in black lava stone at 750 meters on Etna's north foot, with three quarter churches for Latins, Greeks and Lombards.

Realmonte

Province: Agrigento

The Agrigento coast commune with the white marl cliff of the Scala dei Turchi and a salt mine carved into 5-million-year-old halite.

Riposto

Province: Catania

The Ionian port whose name comes from the Sicilian for cellar, where the wine of Mascali and Giarre was stored before shipping.

Salemi

Province: Trapani

The Belice Valley town where Garibaldi raised the tricolor on 14 May 1860 and proclaimed Salemi the capital of Italy for a day.

Sambuca di Sicilia

Province: Agrigento

An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, named Borgo dei Borghi in 2016, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.

San Marco d'Alunzio

Province: Messina

A hilltop borgo at 540 meters built in pink Aluntina marble, Robert Guiscard's first Sicilian base for the eleventh-century Norman conquest.

San Vito Lo Capo

Province: Trapani

A three-kilometer white-sand beach under Monte Monaco at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.

Sant'Alfio

Province: Catania

An Etna village at 537 meters where the world's largest and oldest chestnut tree has been measured at over 57 meters in girth.

Santa Cristina Gela

Province: Palermo

The smallest and youngest of Sicily's three Arbëreshë villages, founded in 1691 by 82 Albanian colonists from neighbouring Piana.

Savoca

Province: Messina

A hilltop borgo at 300 meters above the Ionian where Francis Ford Coppola filmed the Sicilian scenes of The Godfather in 1971.

Sciacca

Province: Agrigento

A terraced fishing harbor on Sicily's southwestern coast, Selinunte's thermal spa in the fifth century BC and a ceramics city since the fourteenth.

Siracusa

Province: Siracusa

The 2,700-year-old Greek city Cicero called the most beautiful in the world — Ortigia island at its heart wrapped in honey-coloured Baroque stone, the 5th-century BC Greek theatre still in use every summer, and Catania's bigger UNESCO sister on the eastern Sicilian coast.

Sortino

Province: Siracusa

The eastern gateway to UNESCO Pantalica at 438 meters in the Iblei, Sicily's city of honey and home of the stuffed Sortino pizzolo.

Sperlinga

Province: Enna

A sandstone borgo at 750 meters in the Nebrodi foothills where a Norman castle and dwellings are carved into the rock as one continuous mass.

Sutera

Province: Caltanissetta

A medieval village clinging to the base of a 800-meter monolith in the Nisseno interior, with an Arab quarter and a sanctuary on the summit.

Taormina

Province: Messina

A 204-meter terrace above the Ionian with Etna on the southern horizon, a Greek-Roman theatre carved into the rock since the third century BC.

Troina

Province: Enna

At 1,121 meters on the Nebrodi ridge, the first capital and first bishopric the Normans set up in Sicily after taking it from the Arabs.

Ustica

Province: Palermo

A volcanic island fifty-two kilometers north of Palermo with Italy's first marine protected area, lentil fields on lava, and a long memory as a prison.