Things to do
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Isola Bella
A small island joined to the shore by a shingle spit you can usually walk, now a nature reserve with the botanical garden of its former private owner. The cable car from the town drops close to the beach below it.
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Teatro Antico
A Greek theatre of the third century BC, rebuilt by the Romans, cut into the hillside so that the stage opens onto Etna and the sea behind it. It still stages concerts and a summer film festival.
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Villa Comunale
Public gardens laid out by an Englishwoman exiled from court in the 1890s, with follies she built from brick and lava stone. It is the quietest place in Taormina with a full view of Etna.
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Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo
The town's first hotel, opened in 1873 directly beside the Greek theatre, with a terrace that looks along the coast to the volcano.
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Castelmola
A village on the crag above Taormina, another three hundred metres up, reached by bus or a steep stepped path. The view takes in the whole coast and it is a good deal quieter than the town below.
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Duomo di Taormina
A thirteenth-century church with a battlemented roofline that makes it look like a small fortress, on the square where the town gathers. The baroque fountain outside carries the two-legged centaur that is Taormina's emblem.
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San Domenico Palace, Four Seasons
A fourteenth-century Dominican monastery on the cliff edge, the cloister and cells kept intact around a garden with Etna behind it. It reopened as a Four Seasons in 2021.