Sicily in 7 Days: Greek Temples, Baroque Towns and a Live Volcano

One lap of Sicily from Palermo to Catania, driven west to east across four civilisations that never quite replaced each other. Greek colonists built temples here two centuries before Rome had an empire, and the ones at Segesta and Agrigento still stand in open fields. Arab emirs and then Norman kings left Palermo with churches whose mosaics are Byzantine, whose ceilings are Islamic and whose kings were French. A 1693 earthquake flattened the whole south-east corner, and Ragusa, Modica and Noto were rebuilt from zero in one architectural style, which is why they look like a set. And Etna is still going. The car is collected on day 3, not day 1, because Palermo is a limited-traffic zone where a hire car is only a liability, and it is dropped at Catania airport on day 7, so the route is a straight line rather than a loop. Two warnings, both structural. This is a packed week: five of the seven days run over nine hours once driving is counted, and if you have nine days, give Palermo one more and the baroque towns one more. And the big archaeological sites stay open late in high summer, which is the only reason a July trip works at all, because the temple ridge at Agrigento is unbearable at two in the afternoon and extraordinary at nine in the evening. May to June and September to October are the sweet spot.