What to do in Salina

The roof of the Aeolians: 962 metres, with a forest of ferns, chestnuts and pines accompanying you to the top. It's the only Aeolian climb you can do in summer without cooking, and in its full version it crosses the island from one sea to the other.

The half-crater collapsed into the sea, made famous by Il Postino: you walk down, and the sunset over Filicudi and Alicudi is the most celebrated in the Aeolians.

The fishing hamlet on the south coast, with its black-sand beach and hydrofoil landing: convenient and authentic.

A path runs along the edge of a ridge above the sea to the ruins of a watchtower. From up there the Aeolians look an arm's length away — and it isn't an illusion: this is the point on the Sicilian coast closest to the islands.

It's the question that decides the holiday, and almost nobody asks it before booking. There is no right answer for everyone: there is a right answer for what you came to do.

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.

Three siblings who might have stepped out of a novel, a poet discovered by Montale because of a postage error, and a room where Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote looking at the island that would give his prince his name. Fifteen minutes from the centre.

In 1949 two crews filmed simultaneously in the same archipelago, over a love affair gone wrong. Then Antonioni, Troisi, Moretti and, last year, Christopher Nolan. Where they filmed, and what you can see.

Not a list of celebrities spotted at the bar. Here, in a villa three kilometres from the corso, Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote part of The Leopard — and on these islands Rossellini, Troisi and Moretti all shot films.

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.

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