Taormina is the perfect base from which to discover radically diverse landscapes. A trip to Etna to see Europe’s highest volcano at a height of over 3,300 meters, is definitely not to be missed. In less than an hour you will arrive at lava-covered areas and discover a place of myth and legend, but also of nature’s destructive power.
A half-hour drive takes you to Catania, the largest city in eastern Sicily. This ancient, medieval, and finally baroque, city has been destroyed many times by nature’s fury and tenaciously and stubbornly rebuilt. Catania, a cradle of theater and music, is a city to be experienced by day and by night – when the sun shines on its baroque palaces, black with lava ash and white with limestone, and when evening comes and the nightspots open and the piazzas fill up with people until the next morning.
A drive of an hour and a half takes you to Siracusa,  a city with a glorious past, worthy adversary of Athens, Carthage and Rome for domination of the island. Today, Siracusa is one of the most interesting cities in Sicily – a cradle of the theater and a splendid monument to the baroque. It is crisscrossed by two legendary rivers: the Ciane and the Ananapo. Siracusa’s beauty and the mythology of the land have inspired poets and writers from Cicero to d'Annunzio.
But Sicily offers other sights that are just as beautiful and charming: The Aeolian Islands, with the famous Panarea, Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples, Piazza Armerina with its Roman mosaics and many more interesting places that we will be happy to tell you about during your stay at the Grand Hotel.
Finally, for golf lovers, the Picciolo Golf Club is about 40 minutes from Taormina; here the scenery is truly unusual – with Etna in the background. Ten kilometers from the Golf Club is another must-see: the Alcantara Gorges.