The Cathedral of Saint Agatha is Catania's Duomo: it towers over Piazza del Duomo with a Baroque facade of white Carrara marble and keeps the relics of the city's patron saint, the heart of local devotion and of the great city festival in...
Castello Ursino is the fortress that Frederick II of Swabia had built in Catania from 1239: a square block of dark lava stone with four great round towers at the corners, in the historic center. Inside is the city's Civic Museum.
Each side...
Piazza Duomo is Catania's Baroque living room: in the middle stands the lava-stone elephant that is the city's symbol, and around it the Cathedral of Saint Agatha, the City Hall, and a marble fountain that looks like a sheet of water. Almost...
Palazzo Biscari is the most important private palace in Catania: a Baroque mansion built on top of the city's 16th-century walls, facing the sea, with a facade laden with sculpture and a Rococo ballroom all mirrors and stucco.
It was...
The Museo Civico Belliniano is the house where Vincenzo Bellini was born, on the second floor of Palazzo Gravina Cruyllas, in Piazza San Francesco in Catania: a few rooms filled with handwritten scores, pianos, letters, and personal mementos of...
The Elephant Fountain is Catania's best-loved monument: in the middle of Piazza del Duomo, a black lava-stone elephant with white eyes carries an Egyptian obelisk on its back. Locals call it u Liotru, and it has been the city's emblem since...
Catania's Roman Theater is a 2nd-century theater that lay buried for centuries under houses and has been brought back to light since the late 19th century, in the historic center, between Via Vittorio Emanuele and Via Teatro Greco. Just steps...
The Bellini Garden, for the people of Catania simply "'a Villa," is Catania's best-loved public park: about seven hectares of greenery on two twin hillocks next to Via Etnea, with stairways, avenues, fountains and little bridges. It is the place...
The Church of San Benedetto is the Baroque church at the start of Via Crociferi, Catania's street of churches and convents: outside, a marble staircase peopled with angels; inside, a nave covered in 18th-century frescoes. It still belongs to a...
The Palazzo degli Elefanti is Catania's City Hall: it closes off the north side of Piazza Duomo, right in front of the Fontana dell'Elefante, with a Baroque facade of rusticated stone, warm-toned plaster, and white stone. Its rooms still house...
The Teatro Massimo Vincenzo Bellini is Catania's opera house, dedicated to the composer born in the city: a lavishly ornamented late 19th-century building on Piazza Bellini, with a richly decorated auditorium of four tiers of boxes and acoustics...
Catania's Roman Amphitheater is the largest in Sicily: its arches of black lava stone and red brick surface in Piazza Stesicoro, right in the center, below the level of the square. What you see is about a tenth of the monument; the rest is still...
The Pescheria, "a Piscarìa" in Sicilian, is Catania's historic fish market, a stone's throw from Piazza Duomo: stalls piled with fish, the smell of the sea, and the hubbub of fishmongers shouting out their wares. It is one of the liveliest sights...
Catania's Odeon is the small Roman theater next to the large Ancient Theater, in the historic center between Via Vittorio Emanuele II and Via Crociferi: a semicircle of tiered seating for about 1,500 spectators, where people listened to music and...
The Basilica della Collegiata, dedicated to Maria Santissima dell'Elemosina, is a large late Baroque church on Via Etnea, just north of Piazza Università: a limestone facade that moves in curves and countercurves, crowned by a belfry full of...
Porta Garibaldi is the triumphal arch at the far end of Via Garibaldi, between Piazza Crocifisso and Piazza Palestro: a monument striped in black lava stone and white Syracuse stone, on the western edge of the historic center. Locals also call it...
The Terme dell'Indirizzo are a small Roman bath complex in Piazza Currò, a few steps from the cathedral and Castello Ursino. They are among the best-preserved Roman baths in Europe: five main rooms are still standing, with their original...
The Terme della Rotonda are a Roman bath complex a few steps from Catania's Ancient Theater. On their ruins, at the end of the 6th century, a church with a great dome arose, Santa Maria della Rotonda, which keeps medieval and Baroque...
The Church of the Badia di Sant'Agata is the Baroque church facing the north side of the cathedral, on Via Vittorio Emanuele II: one of Giovanni Battista Vaccarini's masterpieces, with a facade that moves in curves and countercurves and an...
The church of Sant'Agata al Carcere stands where, according to tradition, Catania's patron saint was held prisoner before her death in 251. It is a small Baroque church in the neighborhood of the Roman amphitheater, and its facade carries the...
The Monastery of San Nicolò l'Arena, in Piazza Dante in Catania, is an enormous 18th-century Benedictine complex with a monumental church beside it. It measures about 210 by 130 meters and is considered the second-largest Benedictine monastery in...
The Giovanni Verga House Museum is the Catania apartment where the father of verismo spent his childhood and nearly all of the last thirty years of his life. It is on the second floor of a 19th-century building on Via Sant'Anna, in the historic...
Via dei Crociferi is Catania's most theatrical Baroque street: about 400 meters running north, lined almost entirely with 18th-century churches, convents and palaces, with only a few houses. You enter from Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi by passing...
The Achillian Baths are what remains of a late-imperial Roman bath complex, buried under Piazza del Duomo in Catania. You go down a ramp to the right of the cathedral's facade, and you find a small part of a complex that must have been...
The Museo Civico at Castello Ursino is Catania's great museum, housed since 1934 in the castle that Frederick II of Swabia built in the 13th century. Under the medieval vaults you move from Roman statues and Greek vases to paintings by Mattia...
The church of San Placido is a Baroque church in the Civita, a stone's throw from the cathedral and Palazzo Biscari, in the heart of Catania. It has a white facade with curving lines and, inside, a single nave full of marble and gilded...
The Amenano Fountain is the white marble fountain on the south side of Piazza del Duomo in Catania, facing the Palazzo degli Elefanti and next to the Palazzo del Seminario dei Chierici. It is the spot where you can see the river that flows hidden...
The University Palace is the historic seat of the University of Catania and its rector's office, on the square of the same name along Via Etnea, a few steps from the cathedral. It is a large Baroque building that takes up an entire block and...
Via Etnea is Catania's main street: three kilometers in a straight line north from Piazza del Duomo, toward Mount Etna. Its first stretch is a Baroque parlor of churches and noble palaces; then it becomes the street for shopping and the evening...
The Teatro Giovanni Verga is the main venue of the Teatro Stabile di Catania, on Via Giuseppe Fava in the Cibali neighborhood. It is not a monument but a fully active theater, with a repertoire that favors Sicilian authors: Verga, Pirandello,...
The Church of San Giuliano is one of the four great Baroque churches on Via dei Crociferi, in Catania, facing the Jesuit College: a convex façade with simple lines, closed off by a wrought-iron railing, and a dome you can visit.
Inside,...
The Piazza Carlo Alberto market, to the people of Catania the Fera 'o Luni, is, together with the Pescheria, the oldest market in Catania: a sea of stalls in front of the sanctuary of the Madonna del Carmelo, in the center of the city.
It...
The Monument to Cardinal Dusmet stands in Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi, in the historic center of Catania, and is dedicated to the "holy cardinal" whom the people of Catania still remember today: Giuseppe Benedetto Dusmet, archbishop of the city...
Palazzo Tezzano is the large historic building on Piazza Stesicoro, in the center of Catania, on the corner of Via Etnea: built as a hospital, for more than seventy years it was the city's courthouse.
The thing to see is the symmetrical...
The Botanical Garden of Catania is the University's scientific garden, opened in 1858 in the center of the city: about 16,000 square meters of palms, cacti and rare plants, partly on old lava flows from Roman times.
The Hortus Generalis,...
The Church of Santa Maria di Gesù is a 15th-century Franciscan church on the square of the same name, in Catania, not far from Villa Bellini: rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake, it still holds works of the Sicilian Renaissance.
The most...
Porta Uzeda is the Baroque arch that closes off the south side of Piazza del Duomo, in Catania, and links it to Via Dusmet: it opens in the 16th-century walls of Charles V, between the Palazzo del Seminario dei Chierici and the Archbishop's...
The Diocesan Museum of Catania is the Cathedral's museum, in the Palazzo del Seminario dei Chierici next to the Duomo: it keeps the treasure of Saint Agatha, the silverware of the diocese's churches and a terrace with a view over the square and...
The Church of San Francesco Borgia is the Jesuits' church on Via dei Crociferi, Catania's Baroque street: a restrained façade with two orders of paired marble columns, at the top of a double flight of steps, next to the large Jesuit...
Palazzo Valle is a Baroque palazzo at number 122 Via Vittorio Emanuele II, in Catania's old town: one of the most elegant works of Giovanni Battista Vaccarini, the architect of the Catania reborn after the 1693 earthquake.
The highlight is...