Cyclope Riviera & Catania tour duration: 6/7 hours.
For the better or for the worse, the development of the city has been conditioned by its proximity to Mount Etna.
It has benefited from the fertile of the soil on its slopes,
succumbed to the lava flows and turned lava into material for building houses.
The people here have never wanted to leave their land so have come to terms with living with a daily risk of eruptions and earthquakes.
Arrived to the Duomo square, we will stroll to the colorful fishing and vegetables market and visit the main cathedral dedicated to Saint Agatha.
Back to the car and driving along the charming Cyclops Riviera where we will stop to the first old small town of Aci Castello,
which lies north of Catania.
Aci Castello.
The town of Aci Castello developed around the castle, which was built in 1076 by the Normans upon the foundations of a 7th-century Byzantine fortification. In 1169, Aci Castello started to expand after an eruption of Mount Etna made the towns in its vicinity uninhabitable. The castle later became the property of the bishops of Catania.
In 1296, Roger of Lauria, admiral of the Aragonese fleet during the War of the Sicilian Vespers, was granted the fief of Aci and its castle as a reward for his faithful service to King Frederick III of Sicily.
The nearby town of Aci Trezza is known as the setting of the events in Giovanni Verga’s famous novel I Malavogia.
A few hundred metres from the shore the basalt shapes of the faraglioni or Rocks of the Cyclops,
rise from the sea, according to the tradition, these rocks are the huge stones that the giant Polyphemus threw at Ulysses.