Taormina's ancient theatre, rebuilt in brick by Romans, still stages opera
Perched on a cliff above the Ionian Sea, Taormina's ancient theatre spans 109 metres, second in Sicily only to the one at Syracuse. Built mostly of brick, probably in Roman times over Greek foundations, it still hosts concerts and opera, and Mount Etna, Europe's largest active volcano, is about 45 minutes away.
The town sits in the Metropolitan City of Messina on Sicily's east coast, on a hill that ends a coastal mountain ridge running from Cape Pelorus. The old town lies about 250 metres above the sea, and a steep rock crowned by a Norman castle rises some 150 metres higher, probably the site of the ancient citadel. Its history predates the first Greek colony on Sicily in 734 BCE; the Greeks called it Tauromenion, later Latinised as Tauromenium.
Successive rulers left their marks. Arabs built the Saracen Castle about 400 metres up Monte Tauro, commanding the bay and the Alcantara valley, and a necropolis of stacked cells, probably from the ninth to eleventh centuries, lies outside the walls. Later landmarks include the Palazzo Corvaja, a 13th-century cathedral and a Baroque fountain from 1635. The theatre's stage wall survives in unusually complete condition, and fragments show it was richly decorated in the Corinthian order.
After Italian unification, wealthy northern Europeans began arriving, and the town gained a reputation as a welcoming refuge for gay men and artists, shifting from fishing and farming to hotels and trade. Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Elizabeth Taylor all visited. In World War II the German Wehrmacht made it a headquarters, and on July 9, 1943, the feast day of patron saint Pancras, Allied bombers struck twice, wrecking part of the south of town and a wing of the San Domenico Hotel while German commanders were meeting there.
Modern fame keeps arriving. The town hosted the 43rd G7 summit on 26 to 27 May 2017, appears in the 1988 film The Big Blue, and provided the main setting for the second season of The White Lotus. An aerial tramway built in 1992 carries visitors down to beaches such as Isola Bella, now a nature reserve.
Source: Taormina
