“A piece of paradise on earth”. Two centuries ago, that was what Taormina resembled to one of its most famous visitors, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who visited the town in 1787. This was to prove an exhilarating discovery for the great German man of letters, who recorded his impressions of the town in his celebrated work “A journey to Italy”.

Taormina today is one of the world’s most famous tourist resorts, lying half-way between Messina and Catania, and at the time it was little more than a village, enclosed by the fortress-like walls that had been built by the Arabs almost a thousand years earlier. The regularly planned streets covering the terraces that in Roman times had held gigantic water-storage tanks are of more recent date.

There are many aristocratic residences in the town such as the splendid Palazzo Corvaja and the palace of the Dukes of Santo Stefano. The churches are all built in differing architectural styles, varying from the Church of the Capuchins to the 17th century San Pancrazio, which was built upon the ruins of a Greek temple.