Sicily and Sardinia are often put in the same sentence and are barely alike: the first is stratification — Arabs, Normans, Spaniards one on top of another — the second is isolation, with a language of its own and five thousand years of prehistory still standing in the fields. Five destinations covered by verified dossiers.
Palermo: the most intense, and the cheapest
Palermo is not visited, it is entered: a thousand years of foreign rule compressed into a city you eat your way through and cross like a market. It is also the best value of the group — €65-100 a day in mid-season, €45-70 in low.
The verified gems are strong ones. The Capuchin Catacombs hold about 8,000 mummies in period clothing hanging along the corridors, sorted by class and trade: not for everyone. Palazzo Abatellis keeps the Triumph of Death and Antonello da Messina's Annunciate. And the Vucciria, which by day now dozes, becomes the city's rough drawing room after dark.
The week to know about: 10-15 July, when the Festino di Santa Rosalia turns Palermo up to full volume — a unique experience, but fierce heat and accommodation to book ahead.
Syracuse: Greece in Italy
In Syracuse a baroque cathedral was built inside a Greek temple, and the Doric columns are still visible in the wall. Ortigia, the old town on an island, has the sea a few steps from every lane.
The right moment is May and June: classical tragedies are performed in the Greek Theatre at sunset, as they have been for 2,500 years. Tickets and accommodation need booking months ahead.
Off the routes: the Giudecca with its miqwe, the Jewish ritual bath cut into the rock beneath a hotel; and the Burial of St Lucy, painted by Caravaggio in flight from Malta in 1608 and back since 2020 on the altar it was made for.
Taormina: beautiful and expensive
Taormina is Sicily as a stage set: a Greek theatre suspended between Etna and the Ionian, a baroque high street polished by two centuries of travellers. It is by far the dearest of the five — €130-220 a day in high season, against Palermo's €85-140.
The corrective is to climb or to leave. The Villa Comunale, the gardens created by the same Englishwoman who made Isola Bella, is free and has an unbroken balcony over the sea. Castelmola, the acropolis-village at 550 metres, is ten minutes by bus. And the Alcantara gorges, twenty kilometres away, have black basalt walls up to twenty-five metres high.
Cagliari: the capital nobody considers
Cagliari has eight kilometres of urban beach, pink flamingos nesting inside the city at Molentargius, and a fortress quarter from which, on clear days, you can see Africa. It costs what Palermo costs: €65-100 a day in mid-season.
Beneath the Stampace district lies an underground Cagliari: the rock-cut crypt of Santa Restituta, used as an air-raid shelter in 1943. The Bonaria sanctuary on the hill is the one that gave Buenos Aires its name.
The secret is September: warm water, half the crowds, and the beaches of Villasimius and Chia still at their best.
Alghero: a Catalan town in Sardinia
In Alghero people still speak Algherese, a variety of Catalan, and you walk on Spanish ramparts above the sea. Around it is the Coral Riviera, with white cliffs and caves.
The two things almost nobody plans for are prehistoric: the Palmavera nuraghe, a three-thousand-year-old village on the road to Porto Conte, with its meeting hut and carved model nuraghe; and the necropolis of Anghelu Ruju, 38 domus de janas cut into the rock five thousand years ago, ten minutes from town.
The Porto Conte park and the Le Prigionette reserve, home to Giara ponies, fallow deer and the white donkeys of Asinara, are the green part that beach tourism skips.
In short
For a first trip to Sicily: Palermo and Syracuse, which are each other's opposite and together tell the island. Taormina is worth a night, not a week, and in June or September rather than August. In Sardinia, Cagliari for a real city with the sea inside it, Alghero for the north-west coast and the prehistory. In all five, the right months are April-June and September-October: the price difference against July and August is thirty or forty euros a day, and the heat is another matter entirely.