Our escorted tours in Sicily and Sardinia

As if on a Hollywood film set, the itineraries sail merrily through the enchanted lunar landscapes of Etna and come ashore in settings ever more steeped in art: from Taormina to the “learned and mythological” Catania, famed for the Riviera dei Ciclopi, for the Malavoglia (Verga) and for its black-and-white Baroque architecture. Palermo: an open-air museum. From “Greek” Syracuse, to the sanctuary of international archaeology: Agrigento (The Valley of the Temples).

Sailing around the Aeolian Islands, we reach Lipari (the White Beaches, the Pumice Quarries, the Faraglioni, the Scoglio di Papa Giovanni and the Grotta degli Angeli) and then Vulcano, with its sulphurous mud baths, thermal waters, the Grotta del Cavallo and the Piscina di Venere. Then Panarea “the little jewel” and Stromboli “the active volcano”.

Then on to Ragusa, with its unaltered late nineteenth-century urban layout (Basilica di San Giorgio, Palazzo Cosentini and Palazzo Bertini) and Modica, home of the poet Quasimodo, and of chocolate. “The Baroque takes centre stage” in Noto, the capital of European Baroque, and Avola with its Baroque churches, its dolmen and its tuna fishery.

Then Sardinia and its hidden treasures: Barumini with the Nuragic village of Su Nuraxi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; Oristano with the Romanesque Church of Santa Giusta. Tharros, a majestic Punic-Roman archaeological site, Orgosolo “the Barbagia” with its splendid murals and Nuoro (the Ethnographic Museum, the little Church of Solitude with the tomb of Grazia Deledda).

The Costa Smeralda (Porto Cervo, Cala di Volpe, Capriccioli, Baja Sardinia). Olbia, Tempio Pausania, in the heart of Gallura, famous for its cork and granite crafts, and Alghero “little Barcelona”. … and much more besides!