TAORMINA, MESSINA

Taormina has a highly unusual layout: narrowest at the centre, it unfolds like a butterfly with open wings, sitting on a rock sheer above the sea.

The most important monument is the Teatro Antico, dating from the Hellenistic age but later restructured and enlarged by the Romans.

It occupies the country's extreme eastern spur, in a location that commands a beautiful sweeping view of the bay of Naxos, the Calabrian coast and Mt Etna and is second largest in Sicily only to that of Syracuse.

From here, it is easy to reach Palazzo Corvaja, the most important medieval mansion in the city; changes and remakes made at several stages during various rules explain the heterogeneity of the whole, which presents Arab, Gothic and Norman features.

It is home to the Ethno-anthropological Museum, displaying objects of art and folk tradition dating from the i6th-i9th centuries.

In the immediate vicinity is another gem of Taormina's archaeological heritage - the Odeon, a theatre dating from the Imperial age and reproducing the architecture of the main one but on a smaller scale. Parallel to Corso Umberto are the remains of the Naumachie: a robust wall adorned with niches that originally contained statues of gods and heroes; it served to consolidate the rampart above with a view to constructing a large cistern.

With balconies, porticoes and decorative baroque features, Corso Umberto leads to the Cathedral, marked by a Latin cross structure with a nave and two aisles.

You then continue to Porta Catania, near which is Palazzo del Duca di Santo Stefano; built between the late 1300s and early 1400s in Arab-Norman style, this is a three-storey building exhibiting works by the Sicilian sculptor Giuseppe Mazzullo (1913-1988).

Farther south is San Domenico, an old Dominican convent, commenced in 1374, now a luxury hotel.

Also in the west is the Badia Vecchia housing the Archaeology Museum.

Not far away stands the Clock tower, a 1679 reconstruction of that dating from the 12th century and razed to the ground during the French invasion.

The churches of San Pancrazio and San Giuseppe complete the visit of Taormina.