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 CÃvico (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 CrocÃferi – 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.
