Italy
Taormina
A Greek theatre where Etna smoulders behind the stage, the sea glittering far below.
The ancient theatre opens onto a view that stops conversation, Etna smoking in one direction, the Ionian glittering in the other, the stage set exactly between. Bougainvillea drapes the balconies of the Corso Umberto. Almond granita scents every second doorway.
Taormina hangs two hundred metres above the Ionian on Sicily's east coast, arranged around a theatre the Greeks began in the third century BC and the Romans enlarged, still staging summer performances against its impossible Etna backdrop. Goethe climbed up in 1787 and pronounced the view among the greatest spectacles of art and nature; the Grand Tour followed him, and the writer of Lady Chatterley's Lover stayed three years in the 1920s. Below the town, the tidal islet of Isola Bella sits in a sheltered cove, joined to the beach by a bar of sand and reached by cable car from the corso's level. The town has been rehearsing beauty for centuries and knows its angles.
Couple
A theatre seat at sunset and pasta alla Norma on a terrace with the same view; no set designer improves on it.
Friends
Morning at Isola Bella, afternoon on Etna's slopes, evening on the corso: coast, volcano and nightlife in one base.
Family
The cable car, the sheltered cove and granita-for-breakfast diplomacy keep every age cooperative.
- Taormina anchored the Grand Tour, and its theatre still stages summers with Etna behind the proscenium.
- Goethe judged the view among the greatest spectacles of art and nature.
- Isola Bella sits on its tidal sand bar in a protected cove below the town.
- A cable car drops from the corso to the beach in minutes, dodging the switchbacks.
Granita di mandorla with a warm brioche is the non-negotiable Taormina breakfast.
Pasta alla Norma stacks fried aubergine, tomato, basil and salted ricotta above the bay.
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