A Slow Travel Guide to Things to Do in Catania

Step into Piazza del Duomo on a weekday morning, and things to do in Catania stop looking like a checklist.

Behind the cathedral, La Pescheria is already in full voice—fish vendors shouting over silver swordfish, brine and lemon in the air, lava stone holding the square together.

In that one scene, you get the city's central appeal: vivid enough for a short stay, but practical and layered enough to use as a base.

What follows explains both the main things to do in Catania and why the city works so well once the first impression settles into daily life.

A City on the Foothills of a Volcano

Catania is Sicily's second-largest city, sitting on the island's eastern coast at the foot of Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano.

The volcano has shaped everything here—the architecture, the agriculture, the people's psychology.

Catania has been buried by lava and leveled by earthquakes, most catastrophically in 1693, when a massive seismic event destroyed the city almost entirely.

What was rebuilt in its place is the city you walk through today: a UNESCO World Heritage–listed baroque center constructed from the very lava stone that had destroyed its predecessor.

The streets in Catania’s historic center were built wide to serve as escape routes in the event of volcanic eruptions.

For a traveler who wants Sicily to feel lived-in rather than performed, Catania is worth serious consideration.

It is not a resort town. It is not polished for tourism the way Taormina is, and it does not carry the grand, operatic weight of Palermo.

It is a working city with a university, a port, a gritty underside, and a food culture that operates entirely on its own terms.

The Best Things to Do in Catania

La Pescheria — The Fish Market

La Pescheria, the fish market behind Piazza del Duomo, operates Monday through Saturday from approximately 7:00 am until early afternoon.

It is one of the most viscerally alive spaces in Sicily.

If you know how to prepare fish and are familiar with the local varieties, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for here.

Or, if—like me—you don’t know the first thing about fish, you can still wonder at the lively atmosphere, which rivals any soap opera. Certainly one of the main things to do in Catania!

Go early, before 9:00 am, when the selection is fullest, and the energy is highest.

The Fish Market.

Piazza del Duomo and the Fontana dell'Elefante

Piazza del Duomo is Catania's gravitational center. The Fontana dell'Elefante, at its heart, is the city's symbol: a lava-stone elephant bearing an Egyptian obelisk on its back.

The elephant is Catania's ancient emblem, its origins debated—possibly pre-Roman, possibly connected to a local legend about a sorcerer named Heliodorus—but its meaning is clear: resilience, endurance, the capacity to carry weight.

The cathedral behind it, dedicated to Saint Agatha, Catania's patron saint, was rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake and incorporates Norman walls from the original twelfth-century structure.

Piazza Duomo.

Via Crociferi

Via Crociferi is a short street, but it carries an outsized aesthetic weight.

Lined with baroque churches and convents, it curves gently northward from Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi, and the sequence of facades creates a visual rhythm that feels almost musical.

Multiple travelers and residents cite Via Crociferi as one of the most beautiful streets in Sicily. It is also notably not crowded.

The Benedictine Monastery of San Nicolò l'Arena

The Monastero dei Benedettini di San Nicolò l'Arena is the largest Benedictine monastery in Europe, and it is now part of the University of Catania.

Destroyed by the 1669 lava eruption and again by the 1693 earthquake, it was rebuilt over the following century into a structure of extraordinary scale and complexity.

Guided tours reveal a building that contains Roman ruins in its foundations, baroque cloisters of severe elegance, and a library that holds the accumulated weight of centuries of scholarship.

Church of San Nicolò l'Arena next to Benedictine monastery.

Castello Ursino

Castello Ursino is a thirteenth-century Norman castle built by Frederick II of Sicily. It now sits in a slightly neglected piazza in the southern part of the historic center, surrounded by a gritty, unapologetically working-class neighborhood.

The castle houses the Civic Museum of Catania, with collections of Greek, Roman, and medieval artifacts.

The building's exterior—massive, round-towered, dark with age—is worth seeing even without entering.

The Teatro Romano and Odeon

Beneath Catania's streets, a Roman theater from the second century AD sits partially excavated, its curved stone seating tiers descending into a space that is at once an archaeological site and a neighborhood backdrop.

Houses from later centuries were built directly over and around it. Hence, the theater exists in a strange dialogue with the city above—you can look up from the ancient stone and see laundry lines and apartment windows.

The adjacent Odeon, a smaller covered theater, is in similar condition. Together, they make the point that Catania's history is not contained in museums; it is embedded in the city's fabric, visible wherever the surface is opened.

Catania Roman Theatre.

The Historical Museum of Landing in Sicily 1943

For anyone interested in history, the Museum of Landing in Sicily should be included to the things to do in Catania.

I'd recommend the Museum of the Landing in Sicily also for those to whom military history isn’t the number one thing in life. The museum is carefully constructed and presents the history of the Allied invasion of Sicily in innovative ways.

Right next door is the Museum of Cinematic Arts, which is equally well-built. It doesn't take too much time to visit them both, or choose the one that interests you the most.

Bombings in Catania in WWII were exceptionally devastating.

Food as a Daily Practice

Eating well in Catania does not require effort or research. It requires only the willingness to follow the local logic: eat what is in season, eat where locals eat, and do not rush.

The city's food culture is built on a few foundational dishes that appear everywhere and are worth eating again and again.

'Pasta alla Norma'—pasta with fried eggplant, tomato sauce, ricotta salata, and basil—was invented here, named after Bellini's opera.

Arancini, the fried rice balls found across Sicily, take on a specific local character in Catania: larger, often cone-shaped rather than round.

The 'granita' culture here is distinct from the rest of Sicily; Catanian granita is coarser in texture, more intensely flavored, and traditionally eaten for breakfast with a 'brioche col tuppo' (a soft, slightly sweet roll with a topknot).

Blood oranges—the 'tarocco' variety, grown on Etna's volcanic slopes—appear in winter and are among the finest citrus in the world.

Spring brings artichokes and wild fennel.

Summer brings tomatoes so sweet that supermarket produce back home seems like a different food category entirely.

Nightlife and Evening Walks

Catania's evenings work best when you resist the impulse to fill them. One aperitivo, one walk, one square. The city does not reward rushing, and the best version of a Catania night is the one where you end up somewhere you did not plan to be, at a table you found by walking past it twice.

What to do in the evening?

- Via Etnea evening passeggiata: free, best after 7 pm
- Piazza del Duomo at night: significantly less crowded than daytime, worth the return visit
- Teatro Massimo Bellini: check the season schedule for opera and concert performances
- Wine bars around Via Plebiscito and Piazza Bellini for a local aperitivo atmosphere

Catania park with Mount Etna on the background

View from Catania park, with Mount Etna looming in the background.

Things to Do in Catania's Surroundings

Mount Etna from Catania

A day trip to Etna is one of the most straightforward decisions you can make when considering things to do in Catania and its surroundings - and you have several options depending on how much you want to move.

The AST public bus departs from near the central train station each morning and climbs to Rifugio Sapienza at around 2,000 meters, returning in the late afternoon.

From Rifugio Sapienza, the cable car (Funivia dell'Etna) carries you up to roughly 2,500 meters, where guided jeep tours and trekking routes branch out across the lava fields and crater rims.

If you want to reach the summit craters at 3,000 meters or higher, a licensed guide is required and worth the cost.

For a slower version of the same landscape, the wine-growing villages on Etna's lower slopes — particularly around Milo and Zafferana Etnea on the eastern side — offer a different register.

There are many small villages at slopes of Etna, well worth a visit. You can get there by local train (Circumetnea) or by car.

Beaches and Coastal Towns

The coastline immediately around Catania is urban and rocky — the dark lava shelves of San Giovanni Li Cuti sit within walking distance of the city center.

The long sandy stretch of La Plaia extends south from the port, backed by beach clubs and the particular noise of a working city at leisure.

North of Catania, the towns of Aci Castello and Aci Trezza sit about fifteen minutes by car or bus along the SS114.

Aci Castello clusters around a Norman castle built directly on a black lava promontory above the sea; the water below it is rocky but clear.

Aci Trezza, just beyond, is the village where Giovanni Verga set his novel I Malavoglia, and the stacks of basalt rock rising from the water — the Faraglioni dei Ciclopi — carry the weight of that mythology without requiring you to know it.

Is Catania a Good Base for a Longer Stay?

The short answer is yes, with a clear-eyed understanding of what that means.

Catania has an international airport (Fontanarossa, Sicily's busiest), a central train station with connections across the island, and a bus network that reaches Syracuse, Taormina, Agrigento, and Palermo.

For anyone planning to spend two weeks or more in Sicily, Catania serves as a practical hub that smaller towns simply cannot.

The cost of living is genuinely affordable by Western standards.

Remote work is feasible in Catania, though not seamless. The city has coworking spaces—Coworking Catania being the most established—and a growing number of cafés with reliable WiFi.

Internet speeds in the city center are generally adequate for video calls and standard remote work. Still, Sicilian infrastructure can be inconsistent, and it is worth confirming speeds before committing to a long-term rental.

The honest tradeoff: Catania is not Ortigia (the island district of Syracuse), which is more immediately picturesque and has a stronger expat community.

It certainly is not Taormina, which offers a more manicured beauty and dramatic coastal views.

What Catania offers is scale, grit, and coherence—a city large enough to have real neighborhoods and daily life, and enough cultural infrastructure (theaters, museums, markets, university energy) to sustain a longer stay without the feeling of having exhausted it.

Things to Do in Catania: Conclusion

What Catania offers is something hard to manufacture: the texture of a place that is fully itself, indifferent to whether you appreciate it or not.

That indifference is, paradoxically, the source of its appeal. Catania has not been softened by hordes of tourists who visit it every day, year-round.

The downside, for many, is that it's thoroughly ragged. Catania is not for everyone.

And yet, if you stay long enough to learn the city's ways, it begins to open in a way that polished destinations rarely do.

Catania is large enough to have depth and unglamorous enough that it has not been pre-interpreted for you.

Come with low expectations and a high tolerance for disorder, and Catania will almost certainly exceed the first and reward the second.

The elephant has been carrying that obelisk for three centuries. It is not in a hurry. Neither should you be.

Catania Cathedral.

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