Paternò's Norman donjon — the keep count Roger I raised in 1072 on the lava crag — has commanded the Simeto valley for nearly a thousand years: from its terrace, Etna fills the horizon as in few other spots on the island. Below the historic hill, with its mother church and Santa Maria dell'Alto, the town lives on citrus: its blood oranges reach markets across Europe.
The salinelle — small cold mud volcanoes, a geological curiosity — repeat that the earth here is alive. Catania is twenty minutes away; the summit craters an hour of road and trail.
Near Paternò
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
