Sicily is known for its coastline, but no less wonderful is its deep interior, the entroterra. To see both at their “finest”, head to Agrigento, said Julia Buckley in The Times.
This town on the island’s southern coast is famed for its ancient Greek temples, one of which – the Tempio della Concordia – is said to be the world’s best-preserved Doric temple after the Parthenon. There are beautiful beaches nearby, while to the north, rolling hills “crescendo into craggy green mountains”, and lonely towns perched on high bluffs bear the marks of the “myriad” cultures of Sicily’s past conquerors. There are Roman villas, Arabic watchtowers, Norman churches and Swabian castles. It’s “one great Mediterranean gumbo of raw beauty and, best of all, there are hardly any other tourists to share it with”. In Agrigento, you might stay at Villa Athena, an 18th-century villa “set plum inside the Valley of the Temples archaeological park”. Converted into a hotel in 1972, it is wonderfully peaceful, and commands magnificent views of the ruins.
Eighty minutes northeast lies Piazza Armerina, a hilltop town of “honey-stone” baroque buildings. The Villa Romana del Casale, nearby, has the finest in situ Roman mosaics in the world, including the Great Hunt, with its marvellous depictions of leopards, lions and elephants. To the west is Mussomeli, another fine hill town in the most beautiful part of the entroterra, where rocky outcrops “thrust like fists into the air” amid the “rippling” hills. Indeed, the view from the castle in neighbouring Sutera has a distinct “feel of the Grand Canyon” about it.
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This is “a land of gastronomy, although it doesn’t shout about it”. Caltanissetta has some particularly good restaurants and wonderful sweets, including the cannolo – a fried pastry cylinder stuffed with sweet ricotta that was first created here. Try it at Pasticceria Angelo Scarfia, and don’t miss Sunday lunch at the bakery in nearby Borgo Santa Rita, where dogs snooze and sheep clatter around tables set out across the street. It’s like a “film set”, and the caponata is divine.
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