Home › Landforms › Islands & Archipelagos
Sicily
The largest island in the Mediterranean, crossroads of civilisations
At the toe of the Italian peninsula, separated by a narrow strait, lies the great triangular island that has stood at the centre of the Mediterranean for three thousand years. Sicily is the sea's largest island, a sun-baked land of Greek temples, Norman cathedrals and Baroque towns, all overlooked by the smoking summit of Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano. Conquered in turn by nearly every Mediterranean power, Sicily wears its layered history openly, a place where Greek, Roman, Arab and Norman influences blend into something wholly its own.
Sicily covers about 25,711 square kilometres and is separated from the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina, in places only a few kilometres wide. Its interior is hilly and dry, ringed by fertile coastal plains, and its eastern flank is dominated by Etna, which at roughly 3,400 metres is the island's highest point and a near-constant presence of ash and fire. The island sits at the seismic boundary between the African and Eurasian plates, and its position has blessed it with rich volcanic soils ideal for vines, olives and citrus, the foundations of its agriculture for millennia.
Sicily's strategic position made it a prize for ancient Greeks, who built some of the finest temples in the classical world at Agrigento and Selinunte, and for Carthage and Rome, which fought their first great war over it. Arab rule in the early Middle Ages introduced citrus and sophisticated irrigation, and the Normans who followed left a dazzling fusion of Byzantine, Islamic and Western art. In modern times the island has wrestled with poverty, emigration and the long shadow of the Mafia, even as its food, landscapes and extraordinary heritage make it one of the Mediterranean's most evocative destinations.