Catania
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Late Baroque Towns Of The Val Di Noto, Inscribed 2002), A City Rebuilt In Lava Basalt After The 1669 Eruption And The 1693 Earthquake · Catania, Sicily
Sicily's second city, built out of the volcano that keeps trying to destroy it. Lava took the western half in 1669 and an earthquake flattened the rest in 1693, so the whole centre was rebuilt at once in baroque, using the black basalt the eruption had just delivered, which is why Catania is grey and white in a way no other Italian city is. Etna stands behind it at three thousand three hundred metres and is visible from the end of almost every street, smoking. The set piece is a cathedral square with an elephant made of lava carrying an Egyptian obelisk in the middle of it, which the city has adopted as its symbol for reasons nobody fully explains. Behind that is the Pescheria, a fish market that is genuinely a market rather than a spectacle, loud and wet and finished by lunchtime. It is scruffier and cheaper than Palermo and it has the better airport, which makes it the sensible way into the whole east of the island rather than a place to pass through.
Piazza del Duomo, Catania, Sicily, 95124, Italy
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: Piazza del Duomo and Via Etnea are public and never close. THE PESCHERIA RUNS MORNINGS ONLY, Monday to Saturday, and is finished by about lunchtime. The cathedral opens daily with a long early-afternoon interval. The Benedictine monastery is seen on GUIDED VISITS at set times. The Roman theatre and Castello Ursino keep municipal museum hours with a weekly closing day. The Circumetnea runs a limited daily service. Confirm the monastery tour times before arriving.