Catania to Acitrezza

The beautiful and charming small marine village near Catania. Come to visit Acitrezza and The Islands of the Cyclops. Just in front of the coast of Acitrezza you will see three tall little islands. According to the mythological legends, these great stones are the ones thrown at Ulysses in the Odyssey, a major ancient Greek epic poems. This complements the notion that the Cyclops, giants each with a single eye in the center of his forehead, once had a smithy below Mount Etna, which looms over the village to the northwest.

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Along the beautiful stretch of coast overlooking the Ionian Sea, you will find picturesque seaside villages and renowned resorts. The village of Acitrezza, of seafaring traditions, has been immortalized in the novel "I Malavoglia" by Giovanni Verga (The House by the Medlar-Tree, translated by Mary A. Craig was published in the Continental Classics series).

Holiday resort but now also of residence, maintains strong ties to fishing: Many restaurants are located around the harbor, which has become a furnished tourist stopovers but where still are forged big wooden fishing boats and also the location of a fish market. In front of the village stand out peremptory The stacks of the Cyclops, basaltic rocks that the myth identifies as those launched by blinded Polyphemus to destroy the ships of Ulysses on the run.

The most impressive is the Lachea island in the center of which is the station of biological studies and physics of the sea. Since 1989, the island and the other reefs have been declared a natural marine area and in 1998 the Lachea-Faraglioni island reserve of the Cyclopes was established.