Catania

American Express c/o La Duca Viaggi, Via Etnea 63 (tel 095.316.155); Mon-Fri 9am-1pm & 4-7.30pm, Sat 9am-noon (but not for cashing cheques).

Car rental Avis, at airfield (tel 095.340.500) and Via V. Giuffrida 19 (tel 095.445.536); Maggiore/Budget, at airfield (tel 095.340.594); National Car Rental, at airfield (tel 095.340.252); Hertz, at airfield (tel 095.341.595) and Via P. Toselli 16 (tel 095.322.560); Holiday Car Rental, at airfield (tel 095.346.769).

Emergencies tel 113 for all emergency services.

Hospital Ospedale Vittorio Emanuele, Via Plebiscito; Ospedale Generale Garibaldi, Piazza S. Maria di Gesù 7; S. Tomaselli, Via Passo Gravina 185; for any of these, call 095.759.1111.

Pharmacies Caltabiano, Piazza Stesicoro 34 (tel 095.327.647); Croce Rossa, Via Etnea 274 (tel 095.317.053); Europa, Corso Italia 105 (tel 095.383.536).

Police Emergencies tel 112; Carabinieri, Piazza Giovanni Verga 8 (tel 095.537.822).

Post office Main post office and poste restante at Via Etnea 215, close to the Villa composer (Mon-Sat 8.30am-7.30pm).

Telephones Offices at Corso Sicilia 67, at the airfield (both regular 9am-8pm), and at Via A. Longo 54 (daily 8am-9.45pm), next to the botanical gardens.

Travel agents La Duca Viaggi, Via Etnea 63-65 (tel 095.316.155); Elisea, Corso Sicilia 31 (tel 095.312.321); Etnea Viaggi, Corso Sicilia 109 (tel 095.327.080); Viaggi Wasteel, Piazza Giovanni XXIII (tel 095.531.511).

You’ll rarely do better for intake than in Catania, where fresh fish is a speciality. The Ristorante Rapido , Via Corridoni 17 (closed Sun), off Via Pacini, is probably Catania’s best-value restaurant - great at lunch, with a bargain pranzo completo . Worth trying too is the Trattoria Tripoli , Via Pardo 30 (closed Sun), close by the fish market, where you can try the fried fish and spaghetti alla Norma specialities. For a more expensive meal, Ristorante Finocchiaro , off Piazza dell’Università at Via E. Reina 13, has excellent antipasti and unusual local dishes, and at Don Turiddu , Via Musumeci 50, there’s no menu, just a splendid parade of antipasti and fish at the entrance for you to take your pick (closed Sun & Aug). For snacks , Savia , Via Etnea 302, opposite the main entrance to the Villa Bellini, is one of the town’s finest stand-up café-bars, open since 1899.

Catania’s student population ensures a clean choice of youthful bars and pubs - some with live music - which stay open late. In addition, the comune operates café concerto periods during the summer, when the streets and squares of the old town, between Piazza Università and Piazza Bellini, are closed to traffic between 9pm and 2am. The bars here all spill tables out onto the squares and alleys, and live bands keep things swinging until the small hours.

The Stazione Centrale , for all mainline trains, is in Piazza Giovanni XXIII, northeast of the centre (train information tel 147.888.088). If you’re changing on to the round-Etna train, the Stazione Circumetnea is at Corso delle Province 13, just off Corso Italia (information tel 095.531.402 or 095.374.842). The airfield , Fontanarossa (tel 095.730.6266 or 095.730.6277), is 5km south and is the entry point of most charter flights to Sicily. To get into the city, take the Alibus (every 15min, 5am-midnight; L1300/0.68) from right outside, which runs to the central Piazza Stesicoro (on Via Etnea) and to Stazione Centrale in around 20 minutes. A taxi from the rank outside the airfield will cost around L35,000/18.20 for the same journey.

All buses , both regional from Catania domain and island-wide, stop at various points in Piazza Giovanni XXIII, crossways from the train station. Of the bus companies, AST (tel 095.746.1096; timetables are pinned to posts and there’s a ticket office at Via L. Sturzo 230, on the easterly side of the square) stop opposite the station and serve Acireale, Carlentini, Etna ( Rifugio Sapienza ), Lentini and Nicolosi; Etna Trasporti (tel 095.530.396) leave from Via d’Amico 181, at the back of the piazza, for Caltagirone, Piazza Armerina, Gela, Giardini-Naxos and Taormina; Interbus (tel 095.532.716), going to Acireale, Giardini-Naxos, Taormina, Siracusa and Ragusa, also depart from Via d’Amico 181, as do SAIS (tel 095.536.168) to Agrigento, Enna, Caltanissetta, Messina/Taormina, Nicosia, Noto, Pachino, Palermo and Siracusa.

Immediately outside the Stazione Centrale you’ll find ranks of AMT city buses : #1/4, #4/7, #4/27, #4/39 and #431 run into the centre, along Via VI Aprile and Via Vittorio Emanuele to Piazza del Duomo; the #4/8 also takes you to Via Etnea. Other central pick-up points are Piazza del Duomo itself, Piazza Stesicoro, and Piazza Borsellino (below Piazza del Duomo), where there’s a stop for the airfield Alibus and for buses #4/27 and #5/38, which serve the campsites. Tickets (L1300/0.68) are valid for any number of journeys within ninety minutes and are acquirable from tabacchi , the newsagents inside Stazione Centrale or the booth outside the station. The same outlets also sell a Biglietto Giornaliero (L3500/1.82), valid for one-day’s unlimited travel on all local AMT bus routes.

There’s a tourist office (daily 9am-7pm; tel 095.730.6255) inside Stazione Centrale, with English-speaking staff. The main office (daily 9am-7pm; tel 095.730.6233 or 095.730.6222, fax 095.316.407) is signposted off Via Etnea, at Via Cimarosa 10. There’s also an information office at the airfield (daily 8am-9pm; tel 095.730.6266 or 095.730.6277).

First impressions don’t do much at all for CATANIA , on an initial encounter possibly the island’s gloomiest spot. Built from black-grey volcanic stone, its central streets can feel suffocating, dark with the shadows of grimy, high Baroque churches and palazzi ; and the presence of Etna dominates everywhere, in the buildings, in the brooding vistas you get of the mountain at the end of Catania’s streets - even the city’s main street is titled after the volcano.

Yet fight the urge to change buses and run: Catania is one of the most intriguing, and historic, of Sicily’s cities. Some of the island’s first Greek colonists settled the site as primeval as 729 BC, becoming so influential that their laws were eventually adopted by all the Ionian colonies of Magna Graecia. Later, a series of natural disasters helped shape the city as it appears today: Etna erupted in 1669, engulfing the city, the lava swamping the harbour, which was then topped by an seism in 1693 that devastated the whole of southeastern Sicily. The swift rebuilding was on a grand scale, and making full use of the local building material, Giovanni Vaccarini, the eighteenth-century architect, gave the city a lofty, noble air. Despite the neglect of many of the churches and the disintegrating, grey mansions, there’s still interest in what, at first, might seem intimidating. Delving about throws up lava-encrusted Roman relics, surviving alongside some of the finest Baroque work on the island

The City

Catania’s main square, Piazza del Duomo , is a handy orientation point and a stop for most city buses: Via Etnea steams off north, lined with the city’s most fashionable shops and cafés; fish market and port lie behind to the south; train station to the east; the best of the Baroque quarter to the west.

It’s also one of Sicily’s most captivating city squares, rebuilt completely in the first half of the eighteenth century by Vaccarini and surrounded with fine Baroque structures. Most striking of these is the Municipio on the northern side of the piazza, finished in 1741, though to admire it properly you’ll have to acquire the central reserve of the piazza. Here, the elephant fountain is the city’s symbol, the eighteenth-century lava elephant supporting an Egyptian grapheme on its back.

Cross back for the Duomo (daily 8am-noon & 5-8pm) on the piazza’s orient flank. Apart from the marvellous volcanic-rock medieval apses (seen through the gate at Via Vittorio Emanuele 159), this was pretty much entirely remodelled by Vaccarini, whose heavy Baroque touch is readily apparent from the imposing deception on which he tagged granite columns from Catania’s Roman amphitheatre . The interior is no less grand: adorned by a rich series of chapels, notably the Cappella di Sant’Agata to the right of the choir, which conceals the relics paraded through the city on the saint’s festival days.

Nearby is Catania’s open-air market , a noisome affair with slabs and buckets full of twitching fish, eels and shellfish and endless lanes full of vegetable and fruit stalls, as well as one or two excellent lunchtime trattorias. The roads wind through a pretty dilapidated neighbourhood to an open space punctured by the Castello Ursino , once the chesty fortress of Frederick II. Originally the castle stood on a rocky cliff, over the beach, but following the 1669 eruption, which reclaimed this entire area from the sea, all that remains is the blackened keep. The Museo Cívico (Tues-Sat 9am-1pm & 3-6pm, Sun 9am-1pm; free) is housed inside, its central chambers hung with retrieved mosaic fragments, stone inscriptions and tombstones, while other rooms hold an extraordinarily delightful range of items, including a Greek terracotta statuette of two goddesses being pulled in a sea carriage by mythical beasts and a seventeenth-century French pistol, inlaid in silver and depicting rabbits, fish and cherubs.

Back towards the centre, dingy Piazza Mazzini heralds perhaps the most interesting section of the city. Everything close by is big and Baroque, and Via Crocíferi - which strikes north from the main road, under an arch - is lined with some of the most arresting religious and secular examples, best seen on a slow amble, peering in the eighteenth-century courtyards and churches. At the bottom of the narrow street, the house where the composer Vincenzo composer was born in 1801 now houses the Museo Belliniano (Mon-Fri 9am-1.30pm, Sun 9am-12.30pm; free), an agreeable collection of photographs, original scores and other memorabilia. A local boy, composer notches up several tributes around the city, including a piazza, theatre and park titled after him, a berth in the duomo and the eventual accolade, spaghetti Norma . Cooked with tomato, ricotta and aubergine sauce, and titled after one of Bellini’s operas, it’s a Catanian speciality.

West from here, the Teatro Romano (Mon-Sat 9am-1pm & 3-7pm, Sun 9am-2pm; L4000/¬2.07) was built of lava in the second century AD on the site of an primeval Greek theatre, and much of the seating and the underground passageways are preserved, though all the marble which originally covered it has disappeared. Further west, down Via Teatro Greco, the pretty crescent of Piazza Dante stares out over the unfinished deception of San Nicolò , the biggest church in Sicily, stark and empty of detail both outside and in following its partial eighteenth-century restoration. The builders are in again now, but there’s usually someone around in the primeval morning to show you the echoing interior - virtually undecorated save for a meridian line drawn crossways the floor of the transept. The church is part of the adjoining convent , also under restoration and, in terms of size at least, equally impressive.

Nearby, a few minutes’ achievement north, the little twelfth-century church of Sant’Agata al Cárcere (Tues-Sat 4-7pm, Sun 9.30am-noon), with its strong defensive walls, couldn’t be less roomy. It was built on the site of the prison where St Agatha was confined before her martyrdom, and a custodian lets you into the third-century crypt - now bright with electric candles. From here, you drop down into Piazza Stesicoro , the enormous square that marks the modern centre of Catania, one half of which is almost entirely occupied by the closed-off, sunken, black remains of Catania’s Anfiteatro Romano , dating back to the second or third century AD. In its heyday, the amphitheatre could hold around 16,000 spectators, and from the church steps above you can see the seating quite clearly, supported by long vaults.