Known as the “lighthouse of the Mediterranean”, the island of Stromboli is indifferent to the lapping silvers, blues and golds of Sicily’s Tyrrhenian Sea. Aeolus, God of the Winds, hung out in these parts once, and played with the lives of mariners. Much later Stromboli’s fiery volcanic crater, one of four active volcanoes in Italy, featured in Jules Verne’s 19th century novel A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
At the beginning of April, I visited Sicily. And in among the old and new wonders of that deeply storied island, I finally got to experience Stromboli’s lava slopes first-hand on a trip I had promised myself decades ago.
Sicily is probably the most beloved of all the Mediterranean islands. The ancient Greeks loved it and settled there. The Romans absorbed it and its Greek population as the Republic’s first colony. Arabs made it their home, followed by the Normans and the Spanish, until it finally voted to join a unifying Italy in 1860.
Sicily is, first and foremost, an overwhelming set of sensory experiences – of light and colour and form, taste and smell, noise and silence. However, the undoubted charms of its capital city, Palermo, are lost on my travel companion and myself for most of our first day there. An ungodly hour Ryanair flight from Dublin, a bad lunchtime food decision, death-defying zebra crossings, faded facades and stained sidewalks do nothing for tired eyes and imaginations.
That said, a €35 pre-booked evening Food Walking Tour saves the day. At about 5.30pm, our excellent but heavily accented Sicilian guide leads our little multinational group into a warren of warmly lit and delightfully food-scented piazzas and alleyways. He introduces us to Arancine (stuffed rice balls), Panelle (chickpea fritters), Sfincione (a fluffy bread slice topped with tomato, oregano and cheese), and other delicacies, more than enough for an evening meal. This delicious street food we wash down with glasses of Sicilian wine. We opt to decline, however, the offer of a Sicilian favourite, Pani Ca Meusa, better known in the English-speaking world as spleen sandwiches.
This highly sociable food tour through the old city is a must-do evening attraction, giving a welcome and engaging break from the edginess of the main city thoroughfares, an opportunity to relax, to meet other fellow travellers and to listen to history and tales of scandal and fun from all the ages of the city.
The next day we leave bustling Palermo as it prepares for the upcoming celebration of Santa Settimana (Holy Week), and take the train to Agrigento and a taxi to the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Akragas. A very evocative site, we spend hours wandering and reflecting among its scarred and broken columns, once-monumental stone edifices and now-empty early Christian burial niches.
Palermo then beckons once more, to see and feel it through rested eyes and imaginations. And what better way than the red hop on/hop off bus? That tour brings us around and by the majestic Cathedral of Palermo, the serene English Garden, the great Palazzos and Villas of well-established elites, castles, theatres and markets. Our high perch allows us to look over walls and peruse tiny, shaded spaces, and at the same time to take note of the local promontory of Monte Pellegrino, loved by Goethe during his 18th century stay in Palermo. A tough afternoon hike up Pellegrino to the chapel of Santa Rosalia, inserted into the cave of an old hermitage just below the summit, is well worth the effort, as are the wonderful nearby viewing points over the city and the Bay of Palermo.
Cefalu, about two hours east of Palermo, is a charming contrast the next day to the sometimes nervy oppressiveness of Palermo. This is a very attractive and somewhat more upmarket beach front settlement of narrow alleyways, sea sounds, sunny seafront walkways and lots of lovely restaurants, many perched over the rocky broken shore. We hang out and wander the town and shore. However, our enthusiasm to take on the well frequented path up the spectacular Rocca di Cefalu is quashed by the sight of a body being stretchered past us, an experience that darkens an otherwise lovely sunset meal and wine.
The last three days are to be the highlight, a visit to Stromboli and the Aeolian Islands. We take the train to Milazzo, and the next day embark on an €85, 10-hour cruise to the two most easterly of the islands, posh Panarea and brooding Stromboli. The real, advertised attraction being a promise to anchor offshore and be treated to a fiery late evening erupting Stromboli.
Our first stopover, Panarea, is the smallest, cutest and most chic of the islands. Its curving little harbour-town greets us with a riot of colour and the scent of bougainvillea and begonia trailing along the walls of little winding walkways. These attractive pedestrian alleyways meander past freshly painted blue and white villas and boutique hotels and honey-coloured chapels, until losing themselves as indistinct hillside pathways. Every corner gives the eye new coloured compositions of blue sea and sky, and rocky islets and framing walls, towers and steps. Perhaps it was the seductive charm of this tiny islet that had Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini indulge their scandalous affair in 1949 while making the 1950 film Stromboli. Their story continues in the 2012 documentary entitled The War of the Volcanoes, featuring the antics of Rossellini’s jilted lover, Anna Magnani.
Soon our tight cruise scheduling has us on our way over sunny, blue waters to Stromboli, all eyes drawn to its high crater, and the promise in the puffs of smoke and steam. As we draw ever nearer, our noses too are alerted by a first whiff of sulphur on the wind.
At 5pm we arrive at the harbour of Ficogrande on Stromboli. My first impulse is to skip a drink and a snack, and instead get up close to a place that my teenage reading and imagining had drawn me to. I want to get high enough to see the crater, smell its sulphur and perhaps even hear the volcano’s deep belly rumbles. But we don’t get far along the summit access path, halted by the scheduling of our boat journey and by angry guides who tell us that unguided hikes are “vietato” (forbidden).
In the event, it is well after 7.30pm when the boat stops opposite the Sciara del Fuoco, the great lava slide topped by a collapsed section of crater rim. We hang out there, safely offshore, watching the odd burst of volcanic fire and smoke as a golden sun sets on a darkening sea. Later, as we all wait and watch, a full moon marches up into the sky passing through the smoke and steam of the volcano. It casts its own stream of silver on to a sea where heroes from ancient times once sailed and an ancient God once blew the winds around.
At around 9pm, we are on our way back to Milazzo over a limpid sea, under a full moon and a sky full of stars. Okay, I haven’t been able to peer into the fiery cauldron of molten lava. And I haven’t seen as much of beautiful Sicily as I would have liked, nor stayed to watch sunrises and sunsets on the shores of lovely islands, nor hiked their hills. But my more mature imagination is happy to have done what I have done, and especially to complete my quest to Stromboli.
