🌿Riserva Naturale in Sicily

Sambuca di Sicilia

Province: Agrigento · 350 m

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

Menfi

Province: Agrigento · 119 m

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.

Montalbano Elicona

Province: Messina · 907 m

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

Noto

Province: Siracusa · 152 m

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.

Palazzolo Acreide

Province: Siracusa · 670 m

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 · 8 m

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

Ragusa

Province: Ragusa · 502 m

• 🧀Ragusano DOP

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.

Caltagirone

Province: Catania · 611 m

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 · 700 m

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.

Castelvetrano

Province: Trapani · 187 m

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

Ferla

Province: Siracusa · 500 m

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

Lipari

Province: Messina · 44 m

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

Monreale

Province: Palermo · 310 m

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.

San Vito Lo Capo

Province: Trapani · 5 m

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

Siracusa

Province: Siracusa · 17 m

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 · 438 m

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

Taormina

Province: Messina · 204 m

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.

Catania

Province: Catania · 7 m

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.

Corleone

Province: Palermo · 542 m

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.

Lampedusa e Linosa

Province: Agrigento · 25 m

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

Mezzojuso

Province: Palermo · 534 m

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.

Aci Castello

Province: Catania · 15 m

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.

Ispica

Province: Ragusa · 170 m

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.

Nicosia

Province: Enna · 720 m

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.

Pachino

Province: Siracusa · 65 m

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.

Piana degli Albanesi

Province: Palermo · 720 m

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

Ustica

Province: Palermo · 49 m

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.