EJ · Catania and the Cyclops Coast Tour

Meeting at your chosen hotel with your English speaking guide and get on board your comfortable minibus and drive to Catania. This is a really splendid Baroque city and provincial capital which is situated on an extensive plain of citrus groves on the Ionian sea at the foot of mount Etna. The city is a busy industrial and commercial center, due also to its port. Catania is also to boast an old university. With its 500,000 inhabitants, Catania is the second city of Sicily. Walking tour through the main street, Via Etnea, the longest one in Europe, the commercial center of Catania, with a lot of shops and boutiques. The remarkable geographic location, with a setting that includes Mount Etna and the Ionian Sea, has played a major role in the thousands of years of history of this city. The growth of Catania has clearly been affected, for better or worse, by its relationship with the volcano: the volcano made the fields remarkably fertile and as the lava cooled it served as a quarry for the volcanic stone with which houses were built. Start your walking tour through Uzeda Gate you’ll arrive at Cathedral Square, planned immediately after the earthquake of 1693 in the same place as the medieval ‘Platea Magna’ or main square where in the middle you can admire the fountain of the elephant, the symbol of the town. All the buildings surrounding the square, which is dominated by the cathedral’s facade, are designed by the architect Vaccarini in an harmonious baroque style. Other highlights passed during the tour will be the fish market, Via Crociferi, Collegiata Basilica, University, Bellini Opera House (from exterior). During the tour you will taste a Sicilian Cannolo. After that reboard your bus and drive along the coast passing through typical Sicilian villages as Aci Castello, which grew up around a Norman fortress, Aci Trezza, village with maritime tradition,immortalized in the novel “I Malavoglia” by a famous Sicilian writer, Giovanni Verga. Across the water rise up the rock stacks, or Faraglioni dei Ciclopi, great shoals of basalt rock. After the visit, re-board minibus or motorcoach and drive back to Taormina.