Spirit of Sicily

Unchanging tradition? A balanced pace to life? The lawyer and novelist Federico Mastrolilli said to expect playboys, beautiful women and great nightlife. “They’re famous for eating horse meat,” he added, “and they have a strange accent; every phrase is a question.”

The unusual speech is thanks to thousands of years of political unrest. The five million inhabitants, strategically located just south of Italy’s boot, have been fought over more times than George Clooney. Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards and French all ruled before Italians. Sicilian, spoken by the old but not by the young, sounds like a hyper-logical Italian. Or Latin.

Checking into a hotel near Catania, along a craggy and charred coast formed when Cyclops threw rocks over the Ionian Sea, we were greeted by a group of African drummers in ethnic dress.

There was a man dressed head to toe in a silver suit who resembled an Abba member retired to the Med. Standing in the same line were three men decked in Sunday-best black suits carrying over-sized instrument cases. Had your correspondent inadvertently stumbled upon an ingenious Mafioso ruse?

A man dressed as a policeman, stern and leathery looking, insisted the Sheraton Catania had been chosen to host qualifiers for a new TV sensation: Italia’s Got Talent.

In the distance, behind the glitzy billboards, was a phenomenon as ominous as the variety show hopefuls – Mount Etna. At 3,340m high, it is Europe’s highest and most active volcano. The bubbling pot of molten lava is, like the stereotype of Italians, always smoking.

Now the national sport has been banned indoors, however, Sicilians concentrate on the country’s other great pastime: eating.

And because Etna dominates everything here, the breakfast of choice is granite – a bowl of rocky, lemon-flavoured crushed ice. We took ours with local history boffin Professor Filippo Catalano, whose ancestry reflects the island’s genealogical patchwork (his great-grandfather sailed from Catalonia). He appeared tired by the heat, but the weariness was thanks to a day spent brushing rocky flakes from his roof in Nicolosi.

The weekend before, for 48 hours, black ash had rained down upon the volcano’s crater-laden hinterland. We’d just missed Etna’s 11th mini eruption since May.

“An American once told me her main interest in coming here was to understand why people would chose to live in such a place at all,” said Filippo, explaining Catania has been rebuilt nine times since its birth in the eighth century BC.

Then the grin of a five-year-old eating ice cream for breakfast slid across his face. He tore off a generous piece of sugar-dusted brioche and scooped the remnants of his granita from a crystal cocktail glass, while we shaded from the morning sun.

“When I was a boy, I used to go skiing in the morning and swimming in the sea in the after-noon,” Filippo added. “Thanks to Etna, Sicily is the only place in the world where it’s possible.”

He’d taken us for morning cappuccino at Grand Café Tobbacco, which serves granita with brioche for €3.50. The café is in Via Etnea, halfway between the Piazza dell’Università and the Piazza Del Duomo.

From any point along Via Etnea you can see Etna’s Mars-like slopes. Walk its length and you’ll soon smell the pungent citrus fruits and pine trees in the lower groves.

By the time the sun descends the locals will be outdoors, the cobbled streets and piazzas thronging with chattering and promenading. During the passeggiata families of all ages, girls chasing boys and boys chasing girls, donnas and their dogs, greet, kiss and share the street.

It all seems innocent, but a recent survey found 50% of Italians are unfaithful. So, if it’s not you, it’s your spouse.

Forgiveness was previously solicited in one of the hundreds of churches. It’s trickier now. Most never open. Petty theft has compounded the shortage of men answering the Lord’s call.

Luckily the duomo, in Piazza del Duomo, designed by Giovanni Battista Vaccarini (a Palermitan, made Catania’s municipal architect in 1730, whose flamboyant touch dominates the city’s Baroque style), is always open; its apses even survived the all-conquering 1693 earthquake. The imposing facade has granite columns swiped from the Anfiteatro Romano, a magnificent sunken amphitheatre built from lava and dating back to 2AD, in Piazza Stesicoro.

Church bells bring Piazza del Duomo to life. As does an 18th-century lava-sculpted elephant perched in the centre. Tradition, explained Filippo, decrees new entrants to Catania kiss the city motif’s bottom to ward off the police – A Mafia habit? “No, no, no,” he joked, “those guys don’t exist.”

Whether celebrity chef Rick Stein puckered up to the mammal’s rear when he visited the city’s pescheria (fish market) for his BBC Two show Mediterranean Escapes is another question.

The market, a medieval warren of streets a few steps from the piazza, is a riot. So raucous, in fact, the Italian equivalent of English Heritage had to grant the market special exemption to continue.

Sea urchins and swordfish swing from the stalls and stink of the Ionian Sea. The market unfolds to butchers’ tables where you can sample horse meat (like veal, they say) and hawkers of fresh fruit and vegetables puff on cigarettes and push tomatoes and auber-gines the size of your head.

We returned to a spot near the market for dinner, the grandiosely named Ambasciata del Mare, where it’s best to discard the menu. Pick the best-looking fish from the display, have it weighed and take the waiter’s advice on how to have it cooked.

Wash down some antipasto – calamari, prawns, or local favourite arancini (deep-fried rice balls in a spicy tomato sauce) – with an aperitivo. They’ll bring il primo – pasta and your selection of fish, before il secondo, the main. Here it’s best to agree on one fish to share to keep the chef in good spirits. Four of us ate like diplomats for €170 with a bottle of crisp Sicilian white.

The grapes in the wine were ripened on the most fertile land in Europe.

The price might be the occasional red-hot rain shower, but the rewards are plentiful.

* The facts: easyJet flies to Catania from London Gatwick. Prices one-way start from £31.99 and include all taxes (prices are subject to change). To book flights, visit www.easyJet.com or to book flights, accommodation (inc the 4-star Sheraton Catania) and transfers together, through easyJet Holidays, visit http://holidays.easyjet.com