Description
A wonderful location and unique natural beauties have earned this city the nickname of Pearl of the Ionian making it the most famous and important holiday resort, and not only, in the whole of Sicily.
Taormina welcomes you all year round with its Mediterranean climate, the old town center full of monuments and the spectacular Hellenistic theatre which offers a spectacular panorama of the turquoise sea and a view that extends as far as the coasts of Calabria, the city of Syracuse and the summit of Etna.
The history of Taormina is shrouded in charm and mystery. In 358 BC. the Sicels who had settled on Mount Tauro welcomed the survivors of the Greek colony of Naxos. There they founded Tauromènion and gave the city the configuration of a Greek colony, with the agora, the acropolis and the Ancient Theater. The tyranny of Dionysius II did not spare Taormina, which was annexed to the Hellenistic Kingdom of Sicily until the Romans declared the whole of Sicily a Roman province.
After the fall of Rome, Taormina became the capital of Byzantine Sicily. It was conquered by the Arabs, destroyed and rebuilt as the Emirate of Sicily. In 1079 the Norman Roger I stormed the city after having conquered the rest of the island.
During the Norman period the city enjoyed a long prosperity. Taormina was less fortunate under Spanish and French rule, until it was rediscovered in recent times as a tourist destination full of splendour.
