Catania

Salve, Sicilia! After disembarking in the small Sicilian town of Pozzallo last night, today I'm crossing the largest island in the Mediterranean coast-to-coast, stopping off at Sicily's two largest cities.

The first city I'm exploring is Catania, sitting at the base of Europe's largest volcano - Mount Etna. Catania and Palermo have a great rivalry, which my Catanese tour guide explained and emphasised during the walking tour I joined. Catania owes its heritage more to Spain and Greece, while Palermo more to Arabs and Romans.

My tour guide also dove into various aspects of Sicilian tradition, including their very strict eating rules - no milk or cream after lunch, no pizza until dinner, very rarely eat meat. She explained this was all based on how easy it is to digest your food at any time of day - since it's so hot here during the day you should give your body the best chance you can to function! To that end, I forewent the pizza for lunch and instead had a Linguine alla Siciliana.

Catania's history has been greatly shaped by Mount Etna, whose regular volcanic activity nourished the soil of the surrounding area and allowed Catania to flourish. The areas surrounding the volcano produce the best durum wheat in Italy, the principal ingredient in pasta. It's also one of Italy's foremost wine-producing regions, with volcanic nutrients enhancing the flavour of this region's grapes.

The volcanic activity not only contributed to Catania's food and drink, but also to the city itself - its historic buildings and streets are all made from cooled lava. This is evident not just in their post-1652 reconstruction of the city (after a lava flow demolished all but two buildings), but also in their ancient ruins - their Roman Amphitheatre is black!

I liked Catania, it has a very Mediterranean feel and the people here are clearly very proud of their way of life.Read more