Sicily’s second largest city and the island’s industrial and business centre, Catania is growing steadily. Its very prosperity has caused great neglect in the old baroque quarter of the city, as people desert it for the anonymous apartment buildings on the outskirts of town, leaving the piles of crumbling terracotta to fend for themselves. The oldest areas are in bad shape even by Sicilian standards, and a modern ‘urban redevelopment’ area east of the Giardino Bellini adds nothing to the city’s prestige.
A go-ahead place, Catania stands to Palermo in much the same relationship as Milan to Rome, though very much less industrialized than Milan. It is a provincial capital with a population of 500,000. It has so often been the victim of Etna’s eruptions that there is little to show for its long history, but it always rises anew from its disasters. The hinterland upon the slopes of the volcano is most fertile and densely populated, and the lively town is a comfortable place to stay while visiting this part of Sicily.
Catania is the hub of all transport in eastern Sicily and you may have to back-track to Catania from Siracusa, for example, to get to your destination. Buses depart from the Stazione Centrale. The narrow-gauge Circumetnea, which calls at all the major villages around Mt. Etna, leaves from the Corso Italia Station.
The axis of the modern city is the Via Etnea, which runs to the Piazza del Duomo, once the centre of the old town, most of which now lies to its north-west and south-east. Extensive slum clearance south of the Via Vittorio Emmanuele and Via Crocíferi is a good thing to see.
At the east end of the Giardino Bellini park runs the main street of many names, Viale Regina Margherita here, Viale Venti Settembresand Corso Italia further east.
Leading west out of Piazza del Duomo, Via Garibaldi is street of baroque palaces and fine houses, with here and there a church, and interrupted by the very pretty arcaded Piazza Mazzini. The columns of the arcades were brought from the site of a Roman basilica which is now occupied by Sant’ Agostino in the Via Vitt6rio Emanuele.
Piazza Giovanni Verga, between the Via XX Settembre and the Corso Italia, is something of the up-town central point, adorned by the highly effective modern fountain, by Mendola, illustrating the shipwreck in G. Verga’s novel, I Malaroglia. The storming jets of water are almost as sculptural as the bronze of the terrified fisherman and foundering boat.
The Church of Santa Maria di Gesu stands to the northwest of the park. Antonello Gagini designed the chapel doorway and sculpted the ‘Madonna with the Angels’ inside.
At Corso Italia 21 is the Palazzo delle Scienze (by the modern Piazza Giovanni Verga). There are three museums nearby, the Geology Museum, and the Mineralogy and Vulcanology Museums. Not surprisingly Catania has one of the best schools of vulcanology anywhere.
Palazzo Biscari is handsomely decorated palace is east of the Piazza del Duomo. Take a look into the courtyard if you can. This section of the street is in any case very fine and unspoiled, Sicilian-noble in manner. You can see the extravagant frontage this house presents towards the port from the Via Dusmet or, better, beyond the railway, from the Via Alcala.
In the untidy quarter east of the Piazza del Duomo, in the Piazza Bellini, is the beautiful Teatro Massimo, where operas are performed in winter and spring-time.
The Stazione Centrale, by the sea, is the terminus for most provincial buses and the bus to Mt Etna. The nearby fountain of the Rape of Persephone is floodlit at night to suggest the underworld.
The nearest beaches to the city are Lido Plaia in the south (bus D in the summer from Piazza Giovanni Verga and Via Etnea) and Ognina, a pretty place with lava cliffs, to the north of town. Further on is the famous Riviera dei Ciclopi.