Taormina
Teatro Antico Di Taormina, A Greek Theatre Rebuilt By The Romans And Managed As A Regional Archaeological Park And Working Performance Venue · Taormina, Sicily
Taormina sits on a shelf of rock a couple of hundred metres above the Ionian Sea with Etna filling the view to the south, and it has been selling that view since the Grand Tour. The reason to come is the Teatro Antico, a theatre the Greeks cut into the hillside and the Romans rebuilt, which survives with a broken stage wall that frames the volcano and the sea in the same gap. It still works, too: films and concerts run in it every summer. Below the theatre a single pedestrian street runs gate to gate past a terrace balcony hung over the water, and a cable car drops off the cliff edge to a pebble beach and a tiny island nature reserve joined to the shore by a spit you can sometimes walk across. The town is small, expensive and made almost entirely of steps, and since a television series was filmed here it has been busier and dearer than ever. Come before ten in the morning or after five in the afternoon and it is still worth all of it.
Corso Umberto I, Taormina, Sicily, 98039, Italy
ALL TIMES UNVERIFIED FOR THIS ROW. Broadly: the Teatro Antico opens daily with long summer hours and much shorter winter ones, last admission an hour before closing, and can close early on performance days. The Villa Comunale gardens open daily until dusk. The cable car runs frequently through the day with a reduced winter timetable and occasional maintenance closures. Corso Umberto, Piazza IX Aprile and the town gates are public streets and never close. Confirm the theatre's events calendar as well as its hours, because performances change access.