The Best Things to Do in Sicily, From Antiquity to the Present

Sicily, that triangular jewel cast into the Mediterranean's cerulean embrace, demands more than a casual glance.

The best things to do in Sicily unfold not as a checklist but as a quest through layers of civilization, each stratum revealing its secrets to those who pause, listen, and surrender to the island's gravitational pull.

Ideally, the time would be plenty, but as this is not usually the case, here's first a quick glance at what the 7-14 days itinerary could look like: 

1. Palermo: Where Civilizations Converge

What better place to begin our look at the best things to do in Sicily than Palermo, the capital—a city of contradiction and synthesis, where Arab domes nestle against Norman towers and Baroque façades crumble in slow, gorgeous decay.

Palermo has plenty of attractions, both historical and present. Some of the most famous include:

Cappella Palatina

The Cappella Palatina arrests the breath with its Byzantine mosaics. It occupies the second floor of the Palazzo dei Normani, where Roger II held court in the twelfth century.

Palermo's Markets: Ballarò, Vucciria, Capo

In these markets, vendors hawk swordfish steaks the size of shields, pyramids of blood oranges, and trays of panelle (chickpea fritters) glistening with oil.

The markets operate as theater, with stallholders chanting their prices in a dialect thick with Arabic and Greek loan-words amid an olfactory assault of frying fish, fruit, and the sea.

Palermo Cathedral

On Palermo Cathedral's western façade, you can see eight centuries of accretion—Byzantine, Gothic, Baroque—layered upon the original Romanesque bones that Archbishop Walter Ophamil raised in 1185.

Within the Cathedral, the air grows cool and dim; marble sarcophagi held the remains of emperors and kings, their carved effigies frozen in perpetual supplication beneath the dome's distant vault.

2. Monreale: Norman Brilliance in Mosaic

The best things to do in Sicily include reckoning with its Norman legacy, that brief but brilliant flowering when Scandinavian warriors turned Mediterranean princes. The most grand place to wonder at this is Monreale Cathedral, just outside Palermo.

Monreale Cathedral

Located five miles southwest of Palermo, the Cathedral's interior blazes with mosaics covering nearly 70,000 square feet—the most extensive such program in Italy—depicting Old and New Testament scenes in a visual catechism for the illiterate faithful, while Christ Pantocrator dominates the apse, his face stern yet merciful.

3. Cefalù: Medieval Charm by the Beach

Cefalu is an old fishing port turn beach destination, a short drive from Palermo. In addition to the magnificent fine-sand beach, just next to the historical center, Cefalu's attractions include a Norman Cathedral and La Rocca with its magnificent views to the surrounding area.

The Town

Wedged between mountain and sea, Cefalù retains its medieval street plan—a labyrinth of alleys too narrow for vehicles—where laundry strung between balconies forms impromptu canopies and cats drowse on sun-warmed doorsteps.

Norman Cathedral

Begun in 1131, Cefalu's Cathedral rises from the medieval townscape, its twin towers flanking a façade of golden limestone, while the mosaic Christ in the apse gazes down with eyes that follow, that judge, that somehow comprehend.

The Rocca

Climb the limestone promontory looming above town for views that encompass the coastline, the Cathedral, and the Tyrrhenian's infinite blue.

4. Agrigento: Valley of the Temples

From the Palermo area, we now turn our gaze southward towards Agrigento, where Doric columns rise from the earth like petrified prayers.

The Archaeological Site

Greek temples dating to the fifth century before the common era stand in an array along a ridge visible from the distant sea.

Walk the Sacred Way at dusk; feel the temperature drop as shadows lengthen across an archaeological park spanning eight hundred acres, where the air tastes of wild fennel and dust.

Is there anywhere on earth where the past presses so insistently against the present?

5. Mount Etna: Reckoning with the Restless Giant

Without a question, the best things to do in Sicily must include the reckoning with Mount Etna, that restless giant dominating the island's eastern flank?

Etna rises 10,900 feet above the Ionian Sea. The ascent begins at Rifugio Sapienza, where cable cars lift you to seventy-five hundred feet before specialized four-wheel-drive vehicles grind upward through lunar landscapes of black scoria and volcanic bombs, passing fumaroles exhaling sulfurous breath.

The summit reveals a planet in the act of creation: molten rock cooling into fantastical shapes, steam vents hissing like serpents, the earth's crust thin as parchment beneath your boots.

For those more interested in hedonistic pleasures than hiking, another side of the mountain offers vineyards where one can taste world-famous Etna DOC wines.

6. Taormina: Drama Against a Volcanic Backdrop

At Etna's feet, the town of Taormina clings to a terrace four hundred feet above the sea.

In addition to many world-famous beaches nearby, the main attractions of Taormina include:

The Greek-Roman Theatre

Taormina's Greek-Roman theatre was first built by Greeks in ancient times and then rebuilt by the Romans in the first century. It frames Etna's snow-capped peak through an ancient stone aperture and ranks second in size only to Syracuse among Sicily's classical venues.

The ancients understood that drama requires backdrop, context, and the weight of landscape pressing against human gesture.

7. Syracuse: Where Athens Met Its Match

Syracuse, on the island's southeastern coast, once rivaled Athens in power and splendor; its ruins testify to vanished supremacy.

Archaeological Park of Neapolis

The Greek Theatre, carved from living limestone in the fifth century BCE, could accommodate 15,000 spectators. At the same time, the Roman Amphitheatre hosted gladiatorial combat and venationes—staged hunts.

The Ear of Dionysius is a limestone cave 65 feet high, with acoustics so precise that whispers at one end carry to the other, and the stone here sweats with moisture while ferns sprout from crevices.

Ortygia

Syracuse's historic heart is an island barely half a square mile in area, where the Duomo incorporates columns of a fifth-century-BCE Temple of Athena into its Baroque façade—a palimpsest in stone.

Wander the narrow streets, and find the Fountain of Arethusa—a freshwater spring encircled by papyrus—marking where the nymph Arethusa emerged after fleeing the river god Alpheus.

Myth and geography merge here, indistinguishable.

8. The Baroque Triangle: Noto, Ragusa, and Modica

Follow the coast southward to the Baroque cities of the southeast, rebuilt after the catastrophic earthquake of 1693 in a unified style of exuberant ornament and theatrical urbanism.

Noto: The Jewel of Sicilian Baroque

Noto unfolds along a central axis—Corso Vittorio Emanuele—lined with palaces and churches whose façades ripple with balconies, pilasters, and sculptural decoration.

The Cathedral anchors the town's central piazza, its staircase ascending in theatrical tiers. At the same time, local limestone glows amber in afternoon light, transforming the entire city into a stage set.

Visit in May, when the Infiorata carpets the cathedral steps with elaborate designs composed of flower petals.

Ragusa: Two Towns in One

Ragusa is divided into Ragusa Superiore (the modern town) and Ragusa Ibla (the medieval heart), with Ibla cascading down a hillside, its streets and stairways connecting piazzas adorned with churches—San Giorgio, San Giuseppe, Santa Maria dell'Itria—each a masterpiece of Baroque invention.

Dine in Ibla at Michelin-recognized restaurants: pasta with sea urchin, swordfish involtini, cassata siciliana.

Modica: Chocolate and Vertical Architecture

Modica is famed for its chocolate—produced using an ancient Aztec method introduced by the Spanish—in a town where houses stack so steeply that upper floors of one building align with lower floors of the next.

Sample the chocolate, grainy with undissolved sugar, flavored with cinnamon, chili, or vanilla, and admire how churches of San Giorgio and San Pietro compete in Baroque splendor, their façades soaring above monumental staircases.

9. Western Sicily: The Road Less Traveled

The western coast, less traveled than the east, harbors treasures for those willing to venture beyond established circuits.

Western Sicily has multiple attractions, although many are not as famous as, say, the sights in the eastern part of the island. The most important towns to visit are Trapani, Marsala, and the medieval hilltop town of Erice. Some of the other attractions in the area are:

Zingaro Nature Reserve

Zingaro protects seven kilometers of unspoiled coastline between Scopello and San Vito lo Capo, where cliffs plunge into water of implausible clarity.

Access requires hiking along a coastal trail through Mediterranean scrubland—wild rosemary, dwarf palms, carob trees—to reach coves offering beaches of white pebbles and water grading from pale jade to deep sapphire.

Selinunte: Geometric Puzzles of Fallen Glory

Selinunte was once among the Greek world's most powerful cities and now sprawls in ruins across a coastal plateau—nearly seven hundred acres—with temples collapsed by earthquakes into geometric puzzles of drums, capitals, and architraves.

Segesta: The Mystery of Perfection

A Doric temple stands complete and unroofed on a hilltop, its thirty-six columns supporting an entablature that never received its intended roof tiles.

Scholars debate whether it remained unfinished due to war, economic collapse, or deliberate design. A Greek theatre sits on a hilltop, oriented to encompass a panorama of mountains and valleys.

10. The Interior: Sicily's Forgotten Heart

The interior rewards the traveler who abandons the coast for hill towns, wheat fields, and silence.

Villa Romana del Casale (Piazza Armerina)

Located at the island's geographic center, this fourth-century-CE estate boasts mosaic floors covering nearly thirty-seven thousand square feet, depicting hunting scenes, mythological episodes, and the famous "Bikini Girls"—ten female athletes engaged in discus, running, and ball games.

Buried by a medieval landslide and excavated in the twentieth century, the colors remain vivid and the compositions sophisticated. These tessellated narratives somehow survived Rome's collapse and the centuries that followed.

Enna: Sicily's Mountain Throne

Sicily's highest provincial capital, at 3,000 feet, Enna crowns a mountain plateau offering 360-degree views.

The medieval town clusters around the Castello di Lombardia, a Norman fortress expanded by Frederick II, and from the castle's towers, the eye ranges across the interior's patchwork of cultivation.

11. The Aeolian Islands: A Volcanic Necklace in the Sea

Last, but certainly not least, we must not forget the Aeolian Islands, that volcanic archipelago floating off Sicily's northern coast like a scattered necklace.

Lipari, the largest and most developed island, offers pumice beaches and obsidian flows, and an Archaeological Museum spanning six millennia of habitation.

Stromboli, the northernmost island, erupts with metronomic regularity, visible after dark as the "Lighthouse of the Mediterranean." The boat tours circle the island at dusk to witness fire fountaining against the night sky.

Panarea, the smallest of the inhabited islands, attracts the fashionable and wealthy to whitewashed villas and boutique hotels perched above coves where the water glows turquoise.

Salina, the greenest of the archipelago, produces Malvasia wine and capers; its twin volcanic peaks rise symmetrically from the sea, their slopes terraced with vineyards and lemon groves.

Reach these islands by hydrofoil from Milazzo; the crossing takes between 40 minutes and 2 hours, depending on the destination.

Bonus: Dolce Far Niente - The Sweetness of Doing Nothing in Particular

Among the best things to do in Sicily, one must count simply dwelling—pausing, inhabiting, allowing the island's rhythms to supplant the frantic tempo of elsewhere.

How to Embrace It

Rent a villa in the countryside, perhaps in the Val di Noto, where olive groves and carob trees pattern the hillsides.

Wake to roosters and church bells and breakfast on fresh ricotta and blood oranges.

Spend midday hours reading in the shade while cicadas thrum their electric chorus.

In late afternoon, drive to a nearby beach—Sampieri, Calamosche, Vendicari—where the Mediterranean laps against sand or rock, its temperature in summer hovering near eighty degrees Fahrenheit.

Swim until the sun approaches the horizon, then return to the villa for dinner: pasta alla Norma, grilled vegetables, and local wine.

This is not idleness but immersion, a necessary counterpoint to the intensity of archaeological sites and Baroque cities.

Best Things to Do in Sicily: Conclusion

Sicily offers no straightforward narrative, no single story to carry home in your luggage. Instead, it presents a palimpsest—layer upon layer of conquest and creation, destruction and renewal, each civilization leaving its mark in stone, in language, in the faces of the people who still farm these volcanic slopes and fish these ancient waters.

The best things to do in Sicily aren't merely activities to tick off a list. They are invitations to witness how beauty persists despite—or perhaps because of—the passage of empires.

They ask you to stand in spaces where Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Spaniards all left their fingerprints, and to feel the weight of that accumulated history pressing against your own brief moment in time.

You will return from Sicily changed, carrying with you the gold of Byzantine mosaics glimpsed in dim chapel light, the taste of arancini eaten scalding on a Palermo street, the memory of standing at the rim of a volcano, as the earth exhaled its sulfurous breath.

You will carry the silence of Ortygia at siesta, the amber glow of Noto's Baroque façades, the impossible blue of the Tyrrhenian seen from Cefalù's heights.

This is Sicily's gift: not escape, but encounter. Not distraction, but depth. Not the sweetness of forgetting, but the burden—and the privilege—of remembering.

(February 1, 2026)

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