What to do in Nebrodi Park

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.

Twenty minutes of hairpins above Capo d'Orlando brings you to a white balcony hanging over the sea, with the coast from Capo d'Orlando to Milazzo in view and the Aeolians close enough to touch. Above it, an Arab tower from the 10th century.

An hour and a half of hairpins above Capo d'Orlando and you're at fifteen hundred metres, where Sicily stops looking like Sicily: beech forest, two lakes, free-roaming herds and fifteen degrees less than on the coast.

It isn't a town of art and it isn't a postcard. It's a base: you choose it for what you can do around it, not for the old centre. It suits some people very well and others not at all — better to know beforehand.

Four places that resemble each other only on a map. Two are destinations to see, one is a port, and one is a base. The right question isn't which is finest, but which you'd rather set out from each morning.

Not everyone who sleeps here is on holiday. People supporting a relative in hospital, people working away, people who need to stay for weeks: two apartments with kitchens, in the centre, with weekly and monthly rates from October to May.

On 26 August 2026 Jovanotti set off from the Andrea Doria seafront at seven in the morning for a hundred and fifty kilometres to Palermo. That road starts here — and it isn't the only one.

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.

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.

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.

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.