The sea ahead.
Volcanoes on the horizon.

Climb in the evening, sit at the viewpoint and watch the volcano work while the village lights fade below: the most memorable excursion you can make from this coast.

From the rim you look into a crater that genuinely smokes, sulphur-yellow fumaroles at your feet and the whole archipelago laid out to the north. You go when the traffic light says so.

Anyone who writes Panarea off as an island of aperitifs has never set foot on the summit trail: from the top you see Basiluzzo, Lisca Bianca, Dattilo and the cone of Stromboli all at once.

The roof of the Aeolians: 962 metres, with fern and chestnut forest accompanying you almost to the summit. The only Aeolian climb you can do in summer without cooking.

Above Acquacalda lies a flow of black, glassy obsidian, still since the Middle Ages. The trail skirts it and climbs to the crater it poured from: you walk on volcanic glass and white pumice.

The outing that rescues a sirocco afternoon: half an hour's walk to a thirty-metre waterfall plunging into a rock pool.

A lake at 1,278 metres ringed by beech forest, Etna as a stage backdrop, horses grazing free and fifteen degrees less than on the coast.

Just over a kilometre climbing from the village of San Gregorio up the hill: until the mid-twentieth century this was the only way into town. Mediterranean scrub, cicadas, and the Aeolians on the horizon.

A mule track along the north-east flank leads to a village whose people left in the 1960s to emigrate. Roofless houses, terraces returned to the maquis, and silence.

There is no trail: there are steps. Thousands of them, in stone, built by hand along the flank of the cone. That's how you climb to 675 metres, the archipelago opening up at every turn.

Not a list of celebrities spotted at the bar. Here, in a villa three kilometres from the corso, much of The Leopard was written — and on these islands Rossellini, Troisi and Moretti all shot films.

The sun drops into open sea and the Aeolian Islands sit in the same frame. That isn't brochure talk: it's a geographical combination you'll find in very few places in Italy. The six spots, the times month by month, and when the sun stops falling into the water.

In August you come for the sea and find half of Italy. In September the water is warmer than in June and prices have dropped. In October, the feasts. Month by month: temperatures, sea, crowds and what's happening.

Seven islands, and they are not interchangeable. Choose badly and you'll end up on Alicudi looking for a restaurant, or on Panarea in August looking for silence. For each one: who it suits, how long you need, and what not to expect.

In summer, parking is the first problem for anyone arriving by car, and nobody writes it down. How the bays work, where to leave the car, what time to arrive, and why people arriving by train don't have this problem at all.

A salami that is Sicily's only IGP, a Slow Food Presidium cheese, and the lemon that built this town's wealth. Between coast and mountain everything changes within half an hour's drive: what to look for, and in which season.

Thirty-three barefoot hooded penitents carrying a crucifix, two giants dancing through a village square, devotees running bare-chested in January. In the Nebrodi they celebrate twelve months a year: the full calendar, and the four not to miss.

Two airports, one motorway, a railway station right in the centre. Which to choose depending on where you're coming from, how long it really takes, and why a car helps here — except in one case.

On the coast they celebrate bluefish and granita; up in the mountains, mushrooms, hazelnuts and chestnuts. The real sagre of this area, month by month — and nearly all of them fall once prices have already dropped.

Not the usual ten names copied from a portal: the criteria locals use to spot a good place, the right areas for each moment of the day, and the warning signs of tourist traps.

Concerts in the square, open-air cinema, food festivals and author nights: from July to September the town's official programme — the Estate Orlandina — turns Capo d'Orlando into an open-air stage. The full calendar.

The Aeolians are the reason many people choose this coast. Day trips work — provided you pick the right island and the right timetable.

86,000 hectares of beech forest, lakes and pastures, with mountain roads that climb from sea level to 1,300 metres in an hour. It's the other half of the holiday, and almost nobody uses it.

Two nights are enough for a real taste of the archipelago — if you pick one base and don't chase everything.