the beautiful taormina

Taormina is probably the most famous touristic center of Sicily. The small town is located on a high hill on the coast south of Messina and during its history has followed the events of the overall island. Its been a Greek city, later occupied by the Romans and the Arabs, always playing an important role thanks to its strategic position. It has been the last Sicilian town occupied by the Arabs, managing to resist to the Arabic siege for 62 years. After the Normans and the French, the Spanish crown of the Borbones in the XVIII and XIX century changed completely the history of the city, building a new, more comfortable way to reach the city. Especially during the XIX century the city suddenly became one of the most famous international tourist location and part of the Grand Tour made by the rich and noble European personalities in Italy, as part of their education.

Everything changed when the English writer Florence Trevelyan decided to move to Taormina, investing big amount of money to completely change the face of the city, transforming it as a location for exclusive and sophisticated tourists, initially mainly from England, later from Germany and France, all attracted by the naturalistic and archeological beauty of the town.

For this reason, several hotels started to be created in the city, which mainly had a winter tourism, since those personalities used to spend their winter in Taormina due to the warmer and pleasant weather. From the 1920s on Taormina became a city where everything could happen, the city of the most extravagant parties, home of artists, writers and even Hollywood celebrities. This also incentivized a lot of local playboys to start running their businesses. Among the most famous celebrities spending their time in Taormina, we can list: Goethe, Freud, Greta Garbo, Gustav Klimt, but also many members of royal families of Europe and Russia.

This type of tourism lasted until 1968, when a earthquake in the West of Sicily made the hotel owners scared that the amount of tourists would diminish. Those owners decided to open up to the mass tourism. This changed everything, Taormina became more a Summer holiday location than before, the lively cultural and exclusive life faded away and left the place to a mass tourism, shopping oriented and much more superficial.

Only in the years 2000s there's been a small return of that higher level of tourism, thanks to the many cultural events hosted by the city.

Today the city is an open air shopping mall, designed for the international tourist, that has unfortunately lost its own identity. Nevertheless its position on the sea and with a unique view on the Etna mountain, especially from the old Greek theater make Taormina still a very special place.