Catania Audio Tours

Catania has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that resilience has become architectural fact. The 1693 earthquake leveled most of the city, and what rose from the rubble was one of the most coherent Baroque urban ensembles in Europe, all laid out in a grid of warm grey basalt, the volcanic stone that Etna provides in inexhaustible supply. The result earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 2002, but Catania wears the distinction lightly. The Piazza del Duomo and the Via Etnea are simply where people go to have coffee and be outside.

Etna dominates the northern horizon in a way that never quite becomes background.

On clear mornings the summit is visible from the fish market in the Piazza di Benedetto, which opens at dawn with an intensity that makes other Italian markets seem half-asleep. Swordfish, sea urchin, and the blood-red varieties of orange that grow only in this volcanic soil are all laid out with a kind of theatrical competitiveness. The market runs on a dialect that is barely comprehensible to Sicilians from Palermo, let alone to visitors.