The historic Italian city packed with culture — and the hottest tickets in town

Times

25-06-2025

As dusk falls over Sicily, two siblings embrace. She is convulsed by emotion; she thought he was dead. He holds her as she falls to the floor. It's a moment of intense intimacy and fierce privacy — or was, until the air swells with applause. There are 5,000 people watching them, sitting where, nearly 2,500 years ago, their ancestors might have perched to watch this sibling drama play out in the ancient Greek Theatre of Syracuse, southeastern Sicily's cultural centre. And nearly all of them are clapping.
This is a relationship that has transfixed people for two millennia. She is Electra, he is Orestes. Their dad was murdered; they will take revenge on their guilty mum and stepdad, but not before Electra has lamented her fate with Hamlet-style soliloquies.
Sophocles wrote Electra in about 420BC. Back then drama was for the people — literally 'hoi polloi' — who piled into theatres across Greece and its growing diaspora to watch tragedies and comedies that tied them to their roots. Today, watching Greek drama is an elite cultural event, says Daniele Pitteri — except for here in Syracuse, where, each year, today's hoi polloi descend on the archaeological park behind the city centre to watch ancient Greek drama in an ancient Greek theatre; one where Plato once saw a show, and for which Aeschylus wrote a tragedy.
Pitteri is the superintendent of the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico (INDA), or the National Institute of Classical Drama. It was founded in 1913 by Mario Tommaso Gargallo, a local aristocrat who wanted to stage ancient Greek works in this, the world's oldest theatre outside Greece.
At the time it was a bizarre proposition. The theatre hadn't been used in centuries; its former Spanish rulers had used it as a quarry and a milling area. The only tragedies involved the workers and donkeys who laboured here. But Gargallo liked the idea of performing ancient plays in their original location.
A century on, INDA's annual summer of Greek drama draws theatre lovers from across the globe. The quality is top-notch — the actors are Italian stage stars, the directors from top national and international theatres — but what makes it special is that link with hoi polloi: theatre for everyone, as it was in Sophocles' day. For my two nights of tragedy, the audience was as Sicilian as an Etna rosso wine. 'Here she is!' my neighbour hissed when Electra first emerged. A café owner reportedly refused to charge the season's other star for coffee with the immortal words: 'In my bar Oedipus drinks for free.'
Running from May to July, INDA produces both tragedies and comedies — this year Electra and Oedipus at Colonus (both Sophocles) have been joined by Aristophanes' Lysistrata. It's all in Italian but English scripts are available (swerve the simultaneous translation — it's a discombobulating AI voice), and you should try to sit in the lower tiers.
Of course Syracuse is one big cultural performance in itself, but not yet as touristy as Taormina, 75 miles up the coast. By day the theatre is part of the Neapolis Archaeological Park (£12; parchiarcheologici.regione.sicilia.it). Time compresses here; the theatre itself is a gumbo of Greek and Roman repairs; Caravaggio visited the classical prisons in 1608. In situ until October, monumental sculptures — think a fallen Icarus — by the 20th-century Polish artist Igor Mitoraj remind us of the fragility of man, exactly as Sophocles did 2,400 years ago.
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You can thank the ancient Corinthians for Syracuse's Greek heritage. In 734BC they colonised the island of Ortigia, hovering just off Sicily's mainland, 60 miles south of Mount Etna. The subsequent influx of cultures — Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, Normans, Spanish, Italians — layered Ortigia as neatly as a Sicilian parmigiana.
Syracuse's cathedral was originally a Greek temple, its chapels wedged between Doric columns, its open colonnades filled in by the Byzantines and its façade all frothy baroque. It's a place so heavily holy that not even sitting next to Whoopi Goldberg at Mass once could distract me (£2; comune.siracusa.it). Outside in the piazza, stairs lead down to subterranean Greek aqueducts that were rejigged by the fascists into Second World War air-raid shelters (donation requested).
There are more Greek tunnels turned shelters (including graffiti showing British and German bombers) below the church of San Filippo Apostolo, which probably replaced Ortigia's synagogue after Sicily's Spanish rulers expelled the Jews in 1492 (£5; @giudeccasotteranea). Down an alley, wallowing 18m underground, is the 6th-century mikveh, or ritual Jewish baths, sculpted from a Greek cistern by a community that had arrived in Syracuse 300 years earlier.
There's early Christian history too. St Paul is said to have preached by the frescoed San Giovanni catacombs (£12; kairos-web.com), while St Lucy is said to have been martyred in AD304 where the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro now stands. There are catacombs below (£9; kairos-web.com), but here it's best to whirl forward 1,300 years to 1608, when an on-the-run Caravaggio sheltered in Syracuse. His bleak, catacomb-set painting The Burial of St Lucy still hangs behind the altar (free; basilicasantalucia.com). Again, time concertinas as people in jeans and T-shirts stop to pray in front of it, as they have for 417 years.
The modern era calls — and not just the shopping mall by the Greek necropolis. Erected between 1966 and 1994, the Santuario della Madonna delle Lacrime is a church that looks like a spaceship. Syracuse's fanciest hotel, the Ortea Palace, is a telegram from 1920, built as the city's behemoth post office in proto-fascist style; today it offers guests calligraphy lessons and dresses its bar with leaves of locally grown papyrus. As for the coastal path around Ortigia, which offers views of Etna on clear days, that's timeless.
Ciauru Anticu is my favourite restaurant. Here, the chef Daniele Genovese brings out the best of Sicilian ingredients with his simple dishes, not least a world-class garlic-roasted bream (mains from £16; @ciauruanticuortigiarestaurant). It was Teresa Grande, his maître d', who persuaded me back in March that I could no longer postpone a trip to the theatre; she's gone every year since she was 16.
When I returned last month, she brought intel as well as bream. 'People are crying,' she whispered about Oedipus at Colonus. The next night, tears rolled down 5,000 cheeks — including mine — as, offstage, Oedipus died. Later I saw the actor striding into a restaurant for dinner. I would have offered him a coffee, but I knew hoi polloi had that covered.
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Julia Buckley was a guest of the Ortea Palace Hotel, Sicily, Autograph Collection, which has B&B doubles from £256 (marriott.com). Fly to Catania. The theatre season ends on July 6; one-off music and dance performance on July 17; tickets for 2026 (featuring Sophocles's Antigone, Aeschylus's The Persians and Euripides's Alcestis) go on sale in October (from £21; indafondazione.org)
The north slopes of Etna are fast becoming one of Italy's most exciting wine regions and one of the loveliest vineyards is the family-owned Cottanera. In 2023 the Cambria family turned their own vineyard villa into a 13-room retreat — four rooms in the main villa and nine in the farm buildings next door. Surrounded by vines — bedrooms overlook lines of nerello mascalese grapes — it's a place of heavy peace. Aperitivo hour means glasses of home-brewed flaming Etna rosso and home-cooked food by the chef Paola, while daytimes are for the infinity pool melting into the vines, and tastings at Cottanera HQ, further up the hill.Details B&B doubles from £179 (dimoracottanera.com)
Clifftop Taormina has been blighted by its own beauty in recent years — the town is frighteningly full. That's where Mazzarò comes in. The beach resort town at the foot of Taormina is full of seafront hotels, including this offbeat five-star, sculpted from the cliff itself, which debuted in the 1960s as an Atlantis-themed resort. Rooms have been modernised but some things stay the same: the cave-like corridors, balconies hoisted over the blue and direct access to the twinkling sea. Three minutes' walk away is a cable car whisking you up to Taormina.Details B&B doubles from £343 (vretreats.com)
Who knew life on a volcano was so delightful? Up here, on Etna's eastern flank, you're between the sea, sparkling in the distance, and the mountain, which rumbles overhead. But you're in your own, 25-hectare Eden here — a biodynamic farm and vineyard with Relais & Châteaux bungalows set discreetly along terraces, sunloungers under olive and fruit trees, and bees buzzing overhead as you slop into your private plunge pool or swim in the main garden pool. Talk about la dolce vita.Details B&B doubles from £516 (monacidelleterrenere.it)Fly to Catania