Once you’ve seen Villa d’Este and Villa Gregoriana, you’ve really seen Tivoli - the rest of the town is nice enough but there’s not that much to it. But just outside town, at the bottom of the hill, fifteen minutes’ achievement off the main Rome road (ask the Rome-Tivoli bus to drop you or take the local CAT #4 from Largo Garibaldi), Villa Adriana (daily 9am-1hr before sunset; L8000) casts the invention of the Tivoli popes and cardinals very much into the shade. This was probably the largest and most sumptuous villa in the Roman Empire, the retirement home of the emperor Adrian for a short while between 135 AD and his death three years later, and it occupies an enormous site. You need time to see it all; there’s no point in doing it at a sit and, taken with the rest of Tivoli, it makes for a long day’s sightseeing.The site is one of the most soothing spots around Rome, its stones almost the epitome of romantic, civilized ruins. The imperial palace buildings proper are in fact one of the least well preserved parts of the complex, but much else is clearly recognizable. Adrian was a great traveller and a keen architect, and parts of the villa were inspired by buildings he had seen around the world. The massive Pecile, for instance, through which you enter, is a reproduction of a building in Athens. The Canopus, on the opposite side of the site, is a liberal copy of the sanctuary of Serapis near Alexandria, its long, elegant channel of water fringed by sporadic columns and statues leading up to a temple of Serapis at the far end.

Nearby, a museum displays the latest finds from the usually ongoing excavations, though most of the extensive original discoveries have found their way back to Rome. Walking back towards the entrance, make your way crossways the upper storey of the so-called Pretorio, a former warehouse, and down to the remains of two bath complexes. Beyond is a fishpond with a cryptoporticus (underground passageway) winding around underneath. It is great to achievement through the cryptoporticus and look up at its ceiling, picking out the obloquy of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artists (Bernini, for one) who visited here and wrote their signatures here using a smoking candle. Behind this are the relics of the emperor’s imperial apartments. The Teatro Maríttimo, adjacent, with its island in the middle of a circular pond, is the place to which it’s believed Adrian would retire at siesta time to be sure of being alone.

Most people head first for Villa d’Este (summer regular 9am-1hr before sunset; winter Tues-Sun 9am-1hr before sunset; L8000), crossways the main square of Largo Garibaldi - the country villa of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este that was transformed from a convent by Pirro Ligorio in 1550 and is now often thronged with visitors even outside peak season. The gardens, rather than the villa itself - a parade of dim, scruffy rooms decorated with colourless Mannerist murals - are what they come to see, peeling away down the hill in a succession of terraces: probably the most contrived garden in Italy, but also the most ingenious, almost completely symmetrical, its carefully tended lawns, shrubs and hedges interrupted at decent intervals by one playful fountain after another. In their day some of these were quite amazing - one played the organ, another imitated the call of birds - though nowadays the emphasis is on the quieter creations. At time of writing the fountains were undergoing a thorough clean-up, and although this was primarily for the year 2000, it’s doable it will not have been completely finished by the time you read this - check before you go that they’re viewable. If you do manage to see them, make sure that you don’t touch or drink the water in the fountains - it comes directly from the operating sanitary sewers of Tivoli.Among the fountains, the central, almost Gaudí-like Fontana del Bicchierone, by Bernini, is one of the simplest and most elegant; on the far left, the Rometta or “Little Rome” has reproductions of the city’s major buildings and a boat holding an obelisk; while perhaps the best is the Fontana dell’Ovato on the opposite side of the garden, fringed with statues, behind which is a rather wet arcade, in which you can walk.

Even if Villa d’Este is still not accessible, you may find that Tivoli’s other main attraction, the Villa Gregoriana (daily 10am-1hr before sunset; L3500), a park with waterfalls created when Pope Gregory XVI diverted the flow of the river here to assist the periodic flooding of the town in 1831, is more interesting and beautiful. Less well known and less touristed than the d’Este estate, it has none of the latter’s conceits - its vegetation is lush and overgrown, descending into a gashed-out gorge over 60m deep.

There are two main waterfalls - the larger Grande Cascata on the far side, and a small Bernini-designed one at the neck of the gorge. The path winds down to the bottom of the canyon, passing ruined Roman resting pavilions and shrines to the sylvan and faunal gods. The path winds down to the bottom of the canyon and the water, and scales the drop on the other side past two grottoes, where you can get right up close to the roaring falls. The dark, torn shapes of the rock glowers overhead. It’s harder work than the Villa d’Este - if you blithely saunter down to the bottom of the gorge, you’ll find that it’s a long way back up the other side - but it is in many ways more rewarding; the path leads up on the far side to an exit and the substantial remains of a Temple of Vesta , which you’ll have seen clinging to the side of the hill. This is now incorporated into the gardens of a restaurant, but it’s all right to achievement through and take a look, and the view is probably Tivoli’s best - down into the chasm and crossways to the high green hills that ring the town.

Buses leave Rome for Tivoli and Villa Adriana every 20 minutes from Ponte Mammolo metro station (line B) - journey time 50 minutes. In Tivoli, the bus station is in Piazza Massimo near the Villa Gregoriana, though you can get off earlier, on the main square of Largo Garibaldi, where you’ll find the tourist office (Mon 9am-3pm, Tues-Fri 9am-6.30pm, Sat 9am-3pm; tel 0774.334.522), which has free maps and information on accommodation if you’re planning to stay over.

Just 40km from Rome, perched high on a hill and looking back over the plain, TIVOLI has always been something of a retreat from the city. In classical days it was a retirement town for wealthy Romans; later, during Renaissance times, it again became the playground of the moneyed classes, attracting some of the city’s most well-to-do families out here to build villas. Nowadays the leisured classes have mostly gone, but Tivoli does very nicely on the fruits of its still-thriving travertine business, exporting the precious stone worldwide (the quarries line the main road into town from Rome), and supports a small airy centre that preserves a number of relics from its ritzier days. To do justice to the gardens and villas -especially if Villa Adriana is on your list - you’ll need time; set out early.

Inland and northwest of the city, the scenery changes dramatically, gorges and ravines marking a landscape that’s closer to that of Basilicata than Puglia. MASSAFRA , about 15km from Táranto (regular trains and FSE buses from Piazza Castello), is split in two by a ravine, the Gravina di San Marco, lined with grottoes dating mainly from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. Many contain cave-churches, hewn out of the rock by Greek monks and decorated with lavish frescoes. All such sites in Massafra are visitable only by guided tours (at 10am and 6pm; L7000/¬3.62) arranged by the tourist office at Via Vittorio Veneto 15 (Mon-Fri 9am-noon & 4-7pm; tel 099.880.4695). A Baroque staircase runs down to the eighteenth-century Santuario della vocalist della Scala , built onto an early cave-church, which features a beautiful fresco of a Madonna and Child , dating from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries - beyond which more steps lead down to an eighth-century crypt. The nearby Cripta della Buona Nuova houses a thirteenth-century fresco of the vocalist and a striking painting of Christ Pantocrator. About 200m away, at the bottom of the ravine, is a mass of interconnected caves known as the Farmacia del Mago Greguro , now in a pretty pitiful state but once used by the medieval monks as a herbalist’s workshop. Fifteen minutes further west by SITA bus (from Piazza Castello), CASTELLANETA clings to the edge of another ravine, 145m deep and 350m wide, commanding some spectacular views over the Golfo di Táranto and the mountains of Basilicata. It, too, has a sprinkling of cave-churches, though it’s better known as the birthplace of Rudolph Valentino - to whom the locals have erected a statue on the windy town square.

Easily the most spectacular of the ravine towns is LATERZA , close to the border of Basilicata, also reachable by SITA bus from Piazza Castello. It’s situated on the edge of one of the largest gorges in Puglia, 10km long, 200m deep and 500m wide in places - a Puglian “Grand Canyon”, complete with buzzards and kites. As in the other ravine towns, the walls are scoured with cave-churches, over 180 of them dating from the eleventh century, of which about thirty can be visited. Contact the Pro Loco office on Via Galilei 3 for information.

All buses arrive and depart from Piazza Castello, except FS connections with Metaponto and Potenza, which arrive at Piazza Duca d’Aosta, just outside the train station . To save you the 25-minute achievement in from the station, buses #1, #3 and #8 run to Corso Umberto in the modern city. Get off just after the huge Palazzo di Uffici and you’re close to the tourist office on Corso Umberto I at no. 113 (Mon-Fri 9am-1pm & 2.30-6.30pm, Sat 9am-noon; tel 099.453.2392). Timetables for city buses are posted in the AMAT office just around the corner on Via Margherita 34. Accommodation can be a real headache. There are cheap hotels in the old town, around Piazza Fontana, but most are grotty and some may be unsafe for lone women; the best choice is the Sorrentino , on Piazza Fontana 7 (tel 099.470.7456; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48), run by a woman, her daughter and two cats. There are more pleasant but characterless options in the modern city: cheapest of these is the basic Pisani at Via Cavour 43 (tel 099.453. 4087; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48).

For meals , check out the tourist menu at the Ristorante Basile , Via Pitagora 76 (closed Sat), and the good - and very evenhandedly priced - local specialities at Da Mimmo , one block up at Via Giovinazzi 18 (closed Wed).

There are numerous legends connected with the origins of TÁRANTO . It was variously founded by the Spartan deity Phalanthus; Taras, the son of Neptune; or - perhaps more likely - illegitimate Spartans born while their fathers were away fighting. Whatever the truth is, Taras, as it was known to the Greeks, was a well-chosen site and soon became the first city of Magna Graecia, renowned for its wool, its oysters and mussels, and its dyes - the imperial purple was the product of decayed Tarentine molluscs. Resplendent with temples, its acropolis harboured a vast bronze of Poseidon that was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Sadly, little remains of ancient Taras or even of later Roman Tarentum, their monuments and relics confined to the great museum in the modern city. After being destroyed by the Romans, Táranto was for years little more than a small fishing port, its strategic position on the sea only being recognized in Emperor times. It was home to the Italian fleet after Unification, and consequently heavily bombed during the last war, since when attempts to rejuvenate the town have left its medieval heart girdled by heavy industry, including the vast Italsider steel plant that throws its flames and lights into the skies above.Finding your way around is easy. The city divides neatly into three distinct parts: the northern spur is the industrial part of town, home of the steel works and train station. Cross the Ponte di Porta Napoli and you’re on the central island containing the old town. And the southern spur holds the modern city centre (the Borgo Nuovo), the administrative and commercial hub of Táranto, linked to the old town by a swing-bridge

The City

In Greek times the island holding the old town wasn’t an island at all but part of the southern peninsula, connected by an isthmus to the southern spur. Here the Greeks raised temples and the acropolis, while further south lay the residential districts. There’s one extant fragment of ancient Táranto - the Doric columns , re-erected in a corner of Piazza Castello , which once adorned a temple of Poseidon. The rest of the tiny island is a mass of poky streets and alleyways, buttressed by scaffolding seemingly to prevent the whole place from falling down. The Aragonese Castello (now owned by the navy) at the southern end surveys the comings and goings of warships and fishing boats. The narrow canal they slide through, between the city’s two inland “seas”, was built in the late nineteenth century, on the site of the castle’s old moat. “Seas” is a bit of a misnomer: the Mare Piccolo is really a large lagoon, home to Táranto’s famous oysters and the Italian navy; and the Mare Grande is really a vast bay, fortified by sea walls and the offshore fortified island of San Pietro. At the heart of the old town lies the eleventh-century Cattedrale , which once did duty as a mosque - dedicated to Táranto’s patron saint, Cataldo (Cathal), a seventh- century Irish monk who on returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was so shocked by the licentiousness of the town’s inhabitants that he decided to stay and clean the place up. His remains lie under the altar of a small chapel that bears his study - “a jovial nightmare in stone”, Norman Douglas thought. As for the rest of the church, recent restoration has stripped away most of the Baroque alterations, and fragments of a Byzantine mosaic floor have been revealed. The columns of the nave, too, are ancient, pillaged from the temples that once stood on the island, their delicately carved capitals depicting tiny birds nestling among the stone foliage. A few blocks away, check out the city’s fish market , on Via Cariati, a lively affair where the best of the local catch is displayed at the crack of dawn: octopi lie dazed, clams spit defiantly at you, while other less definable creatures seem preoccupied with making a last dash for freedom before the restaurateurs arrive - some of the city’s finest restaurants are just crossways the road.

It’s a short achievement crossways the swing-bridge to Táranto’s modern centre - though this, like Bari’s, has limited charms, its wide streets ordered out on a grid pattern that forms the centre of the city’s passeggiata, around piazzas Vittoria and Archita. Nearby, the Villa Peripato was the place for the Tarentini to take their early-evening stroll at the turn of the century, but today’s gardeners seem to be fighting a losing effort with the undergrowth.

The only real attraction in this part of town - and it’s a gem when it’s fully functioning - is the Museo Nazionale on Corso Umberto I at no. 41, which offers a fascinating insight into the ancient splendour of Taras. With something in excess of 50,000 pieces of Greek terracotta alone, it’s one of the largest collections in the world. The museum has been undergoing a lengthy restoration and expansion; in the meantime the most important part of the collection is on show in twenty rooms in the Palazzo Pantaleo , Via Pantaleo (daily 8.30am-7.30pm; free; tel 099.471.3511) next to the sea and 200m from the cathedral in the old town. The Tarentine Collection is the main part of the museum. Most prominent in the collection is the Greek sculpture - including two beautiful busts of Apollo and Aphrodite dating from the fifth century BC - but there’s Roman scuplture, too. Finds from the city’s necropolis include the Sarcophagus of the Athlete , from 500 BC, its original painted decorations still intact, complete with the remains of the young athlete within. Mosaics (second to fifth century AD) depicting wild animals and hunting scenes found at Egnázia , are due to be shown at the museum on Corso Umberto when it reopens. Highlight, however, will be the Sala degli Ori (Room of Gold). Magna Graecia’s wealth was well catered for by the goldsmiths of Taras, who created earrings, necklaces, tiaras and bracelets with minute precision, all delicately patterned and finely worked in gold filigree. Some of the best examples of their work will be on display.

Trains arrive at Agrigento Centrale station at the edge of the old town; don’t get out at Agrigento Bassa, as it’s 3km north of town. Buses use the terminal in Piazza Roselli, near the post office, while city buses to the temples and the beach at San Leone leave from Piazza Marconi, outside the train station, as does the bus to Porto Empédocle for ferries to the Pelágie Islands . Buy city bus tickets (L1500/¬0.78) from kiosks or tabacchi , not on the bus. The old town stetches west of the three main interlocking squares, piazzas Marconi, Aldo Moro and Vittorio Emanuele. Via Atenea is Agrigento’s principal artery, running west from Piazza Aldo Moro, with the tourist office at its orient end, at via Cesare Battisti 15 (Mon-Fri 8.30am-1.45pm, also Wed 4-7pm; tel 0922.20.454). Finding somewhere to stay in Agrigento shouldn’t be a problem, except perhaps in peak season. The Bella Napoli , Piazza Lena 6 (tel & fax 0922.20.435; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48), at the western end of the old town, is one of the better budget choices, but can be a little noisy. Otherwise try the smartish Belvedere , Via San Vito 20 (tel & fax 0922.20.051; L90,000-120,000/¬46.48-61.98), or the friendly Concordia , Piazza San Francesco 11 (tel 0922.596.266; L90,000-120,000/¬46.48-61.98), both clean and pleasant choices. If you want to spend a little more, you can stay right in the archeological regularize at the Villa Athena , Via dei Templi (tel 0922.596.288; L250,000-300,000/¬129.11-154.94), with a pool and big windows soaking up the views. You can camp 6km away at the coastal resort of SAN LEONE , at Internazionale San Leone (tel 0922.416.121); bus #2 or #2/ from outside the train station (every 30min until 9pm).

You can try the food and local wine at La Forchetta , next door to the Concordia hotel, with outdoor seating but nothing fancy; an unadvertised menu turistico keeps the bill down. If you’re budgeting, make your way to the Atenea , a friendly family-run trattoria in Via Ficari, a quiet courtyard just off the Via Atenea (closed Sun except July-Aug). In the same neighbourhood, at Via Giambertoni 2, the Ambasciata di Sicilia (tel 0922.20.526; closed Mon) is small but has a view-laden terrace and serves a mean antipasto rustico and delectable fresh fish. Right overlooking the temples below the centre, Le Caprice at Via Panoramica dei Templi 51 is professionally brisk but maintains high gastronomic standards in its classic Italian cooking - a good spot for lunch or dinner. With a car, you could head out to the moderate-to-expensive Del Vigneto at Via Cavaleri Magazzeni 11, south of the temples off the SS115 (tel 0922.414.319; July & August closed Mon; Sept-June closed Tues & Nov); the regional dishes served here are superb.

In 581 BC colonists from nearby Gela and from Rhodes founded the city of Akragas between the rivers of Hypsas and Akragas. They surrounded it with a mighty wall, formed in part by a higher ridge on which stood the acropolis (and, today, the modern town). The southern limit of the ancient city was a second, lower ridge and it was here, in the so-called “Valley of the Temples”, that the city architects erected their unnameable buildings during the fifth century BC. A road winds down from the modern city to the VALLE DEI TEMPLI , buses dropping you at a car park between the two separate sections of archeological remains (the orient and western zones), and then the museum . The orient zone is unenclosed and is at its crowd-free best in primeval morning or late evening. A path climbs up to the oldest of Akragas’s temples, the Tempio di Ercole (Hercules). Probably begun in the last decades of the sixth century BC, nine of the original 38 columns have been re-erected, everything else scattered around like a inactivity jigsaw puzzle. Retrace your steps back to the path which leads to the glorious Tempio della Concordia , dated to around 430 BC: perfectly preserved and beautifully sited, with fine views to the city and the sea, the tawny stone lending the structure warmth and strength. That it’s still so complete is explained by its conversion (in the sixth century AD) to a Christian church. Restored to its (more or less) original layout in the eighteenth century, it’s kept its lines and slightly tapering columns, although it’s fenced off to keep the crowds at bay. The path continues, following the line of the ancient city walls, to the Tempio di Giunone (or Hera), an engaging half-ruin standing at the very edge of the ridge. The patches of red visible here and there on the masonry denote fire damage, probably from the profit of Akragas by the Carthaginians in 406 BC.

The western zone (daily 8.30am-1hr before sunset; L4000/¬2.07), back along the path and beyond the car park, is less impressive, a vast tangle of stone and fallen masonry from a variety of temples. Most notable is the mammoth construction that was the Tempio di Giove , or Temple of Olympian Zeus. The largest Doric temple ever known, it was never completed, left in ruins by the Carthaginians and further dilapidated by earthquakes. Still, the stereobate remains, while on the ground, grappling to the sky, lies an eight-metre-high telamone : a supporting column sculpted as a male figure, arms raised and bent to bear the temple’s weight. Other scattered remains litter the area, including the so-called Tempio dei Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux), rebuilt in 1832 and actually prefabricated up of unrelated pieces from the confused rubble on the ground.

Via dei Templi leads back to the town from the car park via the excellent Museo Nazionale Archeologico (daily 9am-1pm, plus Wed-Sat 3.30-5.30pm; L8000/¬4.13) - the bus passes by outside. The extraordinarily rich collection is devoted to finds from the city and the surrounding area; best displays are the cases of vases (sixth to third century BC) and a reassembled telamone stacked against one wall. Nip over the road on the way out for the Hellenistic-Roman quarter (daily 9am-1hr before sunset; free), which contains lines of houses, inhabited intermittently until the fifth century AD, many with mosaic designs still discernible.

Though handsome, well sited and awash with medieval atmosphere, AGRIGENTO is not visited for the town itself. The interest instead focuses on the substantial remains of Pindar’s “most beautiful city of mortals”, a couple of kilometres below. Here, strung out along a ridge covering the sea, is a series of Doric temples - the most captivating of Sicilian Greek remains and a grouping unique outside Greece.