The Arab geographer Idrisi, who wrote for king Roger, described it like this: a fine hamlet with a great castle on the shore, good land for sowing, streams that never dried up and mills along their banks, and a harbour where much tuna was caught.
The tuna stayed for centuries: until the 1960s the tonnara of Oliveri was one of the most important on the island. The castle, Arab in origin, still stands above the town, which looks over the gulf below Cape Tindari. In 1826 Alexis de Tocqueville landed here on his first visit to Sicily. There are 2,157 residents.
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📅 Every year, on the second Sunday of October
Oliveri celebrates Saint Joseph on the second Sunday of October; the geographer Edrisi, commissioned by the Grand Count Roger, described the town, then called Labiri, as «a beautiful and graceful village, with a great castle by the sea» and a port rich in tuna fishing.
Saffron rice, ragù with peas and caciocavallo inside a golden cone-shaped crust: in Catania it is masculine and pointed, and the quarrel with Palermo over the name is serious.
Read more →A thin sheet of dough folded into a half-moon and fried, with escarole, tuma cheese, anchovies and black pepper inside: Messina’s street food, to eat hot straight from the rosticceria.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
