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First impressions don't do much at all for
CATANIA
, on an initial encounter possibly the island's gloomiest spot. Built from black-grey volcanic stone, its central streets can feel suffocating, dark with the shadows of grimy, high Baroque churches and
palazzi
; and the presence of Etna dominates everywhere, in the buildings, in the brooding vistas you get of the mountain at the end of Catania's streets - even the city's main street is named after the volcano.
Yet fight the urge to change buses and run: Catania is one of the most intriguing, and historic, of Sicily's cities. Some of the island's first Greek colonists settled the site as early as 729 BC, becoming so influential that their laws were eventually adopted by all the Ionian colonies of Magna Graecia. Later, a series of natural disasters helped shape the city as it appears today: Etna erupted in 1669, engulfing the city, the lava swamping the harbour, which was then topped by an earthquake in 1693 that devastated the whole of southeastern Sicily. The swift rebuilding was on a grand scale, and making full use of the local building material, Giovanni Vaccarini, the eighteenth-century architect, gave the city a lofty, noble air. Despite the neglect of many of the churches and the disintegrating, grey mansions, there's still interest in what, at first, might seem intimidating. Delving about throws up lava-encrusted Roman relics, surviving alongside some of the finest Baroque work on the island
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