Mosaic Madness: The Roman villas around the Val di Noto are beyond compare

I went off to university with strict instructions: no easy classes, and everything should directly support a prosperous career. I put two full academic years behind me before I could get my mother be at peace with me braking those rules to take Roman Art and Architecture.

It was the most effortless “A” I ever earned at Northwestern. Not because the course was easy, but because I treasured every minute spent with Professor Jim Packer, consumed every bit of course material with enthusiasm and found the artistic observation and analysis required of me to be something my mother had baked in to my character. I loved that class, and it laid down a bucket list of sites I’ve spent my life working through. Of those not in danger zones, the most significant left was the Villa Romana del Casale in the Sicilian countryside.

This trip, I finally got there, and it lived up to 40 years of dreaming expectations.

The Villa Romana del Casale is one of the great sights of Sicily. It’s just outside Piazza Armerina, a Baroque hill town on the edge of the Val di Noto Unesco World Heritage site. The Villa is a World Heritage Site on its own. It’s hard to throw a cannolo in heritage-laden Sicily without hitting one.

“Villa” is a bit of a misnomer. This is more of a palace, with the latest scholarly opinion thinking it may have belonged to Maximian, one of four emperors splitting ruling responsibilities in the late 3rd century. (He shared power with Diocletian, whose enormous retirement villa evolved into the town of Split.) Some sort of governmental function would explain the almost ludicrous scale here. You just can’t imagine private citizens having a complex this large and reception rooms on this scale, no matter how wealthy they were.

But you’re not here for the size. You come for the mosaics and, to a smaller extent, the preserved frescoes on the remaining walls. This is a place to be captivated by details. I have marvelled at a lot of Roman mosaics in my life, but have never seen so many wonders in one place. (The Bardo Museum in Tunis is the only thing that comes close.)

Room after room of floors surge with life. People, animals and plants are hemmed in my colourful geometric borders. If you couldn’t clearly see the lines, you’d swear they were paintings. It’s hard to get your head around the idea that all of these extraordinary scenes are comprised of tiny squares of glass and stone.

The place proclaims it’s not your average “villa” from the very first room, a massive chamber that spills out into a covered walkway like a cloister that goes around a square almost the size of a football pitch. The reception room you can see beyond that is the shape and size of a full Roman basilica rather than a domestic space. You see it all from raised walkways because nobody is allowed to tread anymore on what were made as floors. Even the most casual observer will need at least 45 minutes to walk through all of the rooms. I needed more than two hours.

There’s a wide variety of scenes and styles here; so many a modern interior designer would probably criticise the lack of consistency across the complex. These days, that’s what makes it fun. The Villa is most famous for a long, wide hallway showing the hunting for, capture and transport of wild African animals who were to be used in shows in the Colosseum and other Roman arenas. 

There’s another animal-themed room off the main quadrangle where Orpheus is charming scores of wild beasts with his songs. And another hunt. It’s a good hint that was what rich people came to the rich forests around here to do. The level of detail is extraordinary, though there are times you suspect the artists had never seen some of the more exotic beasts they were called upon to depict. There are some decidedly dodgy crocodiles and hippopotami. But when the artists bring hunters face-to-face with lions or wild boar they’re at their best, showing the raw emotions of both combatants.

Elsewhere, there’s an elliptical room where the floor has been turned into a chariot-racing arena, with the contestants going hell-for-leather mid race. One is even caught taking a spill, with the drivers behind him pulling hard on reigns to avoid him. 

In the family’s private rooms, as a send-up to that impressive racing art, is a room where cherubs contest each other in little carts tied to birds. Elsewhere in the private rooms, life-sized women engage in various workouts at the gym; this is the other particularly famous bit of the Villa, renown for their classical-era bikinis. 

At the entrance to the baths, a regal woman thought to be the lady of the house greets visitors with her staff behind her. There’s another set of reception spaces off to one side of the main building where the mosaics show scenes of the gods and Hercules battling across the room at a scale about twice life-sized. To be honest, if you were trying to do business in here when the floor was complete I think it might make you a bit queasy, so crazy are the proportions.

My favourite mosaic was in a semi-circular room approaching the kitchens with what would have been a fountain at its centre. Here, in one of the best places in the world to eat seafood, is an aquatic scene of a staggering variety of fish and waterfowl, interspersed with playful cherubs swimming, fishing and sailing in a seascape with exquisite colonnades of classical architecture framing the shore. 

Too much pattern can make your head spin, so I also enjoyed quieter spaces where the floors are mostly geometric designs, sometimes standing alone and sometimes framing details of plants or animals. Another of the kitchen rooms, with braids and wreaths around seasonal fruits and vegetables at their peak, would work in a home today. 

The Villa Romana del Casale was the single most crowded attraction we went to on Sicily. (Remember we skipped highly-trafficked Cefalù, Taormina and Ortigia.) Though there’s nothing but farmland for several miles around, the Villa has an enormous pay-to-exit car park in a deep valley and there’s a small mall of tourist booths on the way to the Villa from there full of pottery and other Sicilian crafts. This is definitely bus tour territory. Curiously, most of the tourists were continental Europeans. We heard only one English-speaking group come through. Though there were at least 20 individual cars there, the majority of visitors definitely came off buses. The secret, we learned, was to take your time, stand still and admire details while the bus tours flowed around you. In between them, you were often almost alone.

To be truly alone with Roman antiquity, however, you can head to another villa with murals on the other side of the Val di Noto. The Villa Romana del Tellaro was much smaller than Casale. Only the partial remains of four rooms’ floors and a hallway remain today, but the quality here is almost as good as the more famous villa. The intricately patterned hallway suggests that oriental carpets form a direct line of descent from Roman mosaics. There are more impressive hunting scenes here, a delightful vignette of lovers and a particularly fabulous tiger strolling through acanthus leaves. 

This is relatively new as a tourist site. For much of the 20th century this was an abandoned farmhouse, like so many that dot the Sicilian countryside. At some point in the 60s, someone discovered ancient mosaics here and started selling them out of the country on the black market. Customs officers discovered the scheme, then the government bought the house and excavated the ruins. Despite the fact it’s just a stone’s through from immensely popular Noto, this feels very undiscovered.

The Villa Romana del Casale is definitely worth a special trip. (Try Villa Trigona, as described in my introductory article, for a place to stay.) But if you can’t get that far and are in Ortigia or Noto, then at least do yourself the favour of getting to Tellaro. Both of these villas show off the incredible opulence of Sicily in the late Roman Empire. Particularly if you happened to be a Roman overlord. They created a feast for the eyes that, thanks to durable building materials, is still truly wondrous.

The Greek Pompeii? Selinunte is a lesser-known wonder on Sicily’s southwest coast

It doesn’t take much browsing through online travel forums to realise that the vast majority of tourists go to a tiny number of places ordained as “must sees”. In Sicily, the default itinerary is Cefalù, Taormina, and Ortigia. If you’re up for some Greek ruins you’ll throw in a day trip to Agrigento. In a search for a more authentic, less crowded Sicily, we avoided all of these spots.

When it came to the island’s Greek roots, we headed for Segesta and Selinunte and were richly rewarded.

Selinunte was one of our favourite experiences of the whole trip, and we both enjoyed it even more than Agrigento, which we explored thoroughly and loved on a visit a decade ago. (We actually drove right underneath the ridge of temples at Agrigento this time on our way to Piazza Armerina, but didn’t stop.)

There are three reasons Selinunte had such an impact: the vast scale of the place, its striking location, and the relative absence of tourists.

First, some context: With its strategic position right in the middle of the Mediterranean, Sicily was a prize colony from the moment the first gang with boats and swords came up with the idea of an overseas pied a terre. Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks all sunk roots, creating colonial city states rather than taking over the whole island. Ortigia/Siracusa and Agrigento were such entities, Selinunte another lying 58 miles west of Agrigento along the same coast. Greeks founded it in the 600s BC as their westernmost colony. The Carthaginians took it over in the 400s BC and it later became a battleground in the wars between Rome and Carthage. By 200 BC it was already a ruin.

While Agrigento remained a population centre with layers of successive building repurposing and layering over its Greek foundations, Selinunte mostly lapsed back into countryside. When people got interested in classical antiquity and started digging stuff up, they could easily unearth the enormous sprawl of the city beneath olive groves and pastures. Today’s site sprawls over about two square miles with three distinct areas for exploration: The East Hill, with the most complete temple ruins (this is what you see in most photos of the place), the Acropolis (essentially the city centre, with housing and public buildings), and Gaggera Hill in the west, with another big temple complex. Unless you want to hike miles through arid, coastal scrubland, buy the ticket that includes shuttle services. Oversized golf carts will whisk you between the main areas while giving you some excellent views.

The entry building is the only place you’ll encounter a crowd; once people get their tickets and set off to explore the landscape spreads everyone out. The first thing you’ll see on entering is the best preserved of the temples on the East Hill, with the Acropolis to your right and the sea beyond it. It’s a stunning introductory view. 

Everyone naturally makes for the almost complete building, Temple E, first. It is in as good a shape at the temples at Agrigento but unlike the more famous site you can walk inside these. It’s a real thrill and puts the monumentality of these structures in a whole new light. Temples F and G next door are essentially just piles of rubble, but rubble you can touch, wander amongst and scramble over. Standing next to a column capital that’s wider across than you are tall gives you profound respect for ancient builders. The back temple, G, was the largest in the world when it was under construction, and a walk around its remaining platform is awe inspiring. Sadly, this potential wonder of the world was destroyed before it was ever completed thanks to those invading Carthaginians.

From there, we took the golf carts over to the other end of the site to see more clusters of temples on Gaggera hill. You need a bit of imagination to get a sense of the glory of the place, but the descriptive panels and the audio guide (an extra charge but worth it) help you to pick out the sacrificial altar, spot the sluices where water ran through the site and the channels on which the temples’ massive bronze doors slid. Only people who’ve bought into the transport tend to get this far and we were alone in the complex for quite a while, no sound except the crashing of the surf on the beach below.

Then we came back to what was the city’s acropolis, sitting high on a hill that had been sheathed in stone walls. Several still exist. There, you’ll see more temples … the central one features an impressive set of standing columns, though isn’t a complete rectangle … plus the remains of theatres, shops and houses. Architectural historians believe they’ve found evidence of the world’s first circular staircase here. There are some boards in Italian and English but if you want to really grasp subtle points like that it’s best to add the audio guide onto your entry ticket.

For the best understanding of the site, however, you’re going to have to add on a visit to the Palermo Archaeological Museum 75 miles away. The best preserved temple sculptures and hundreds of artefacts unearthed in excavations are stored here, as well as some excellent models, graphics and descriptions that bring Selinunte at its height to life. 

In one of the courtyards they show off a row of lion’s head waterspouts from one temple and also feature several copies painted as they would have been when the temple was in use. 

There’s also an excellent AI headset you can try on to take a walk through the complete temples at their height. There’s only one, but as almost nobody goes to this museum it’s unlikely you’ll have to wait. It’s a shame this stuff isn’t in an interpretive centre down in Selinunte, as it would make a visit even more meaningful and I suspect few tourists actually do both. But those who make the effort to see both will come away with something similar to seeing Pompeii or Herculaneum in conjunction with the archaeological museum in Naples. 

I had also planned a wander around Segesta, conveniently located between Palermo Airport and our hotel outside of Mazara del Vallo. A 90-minute queue to pick up the hire car (Avis/Budget in Palermo Airport NOT recommended) ate into our sightseeing time. When we got there … further off the highway and down far more winding roads that you’d think from the map … we realised that there would be a hefty hike involved to get up to the temple. But there was a rather brilliant view from the car park. And so, dear readers, your reporter failed you, opting for cocktails at the hotel rather than in depth sightseeing. The theatre here, further up the hills and not visible from the road, will have to remain a mystery. 

Our short excursion allows me to observe three things. If you’re basing yourself out of Palermo and want to get a taste of the Sicilian Greek world, this is the most logical day trip and the temple here is impressive enough to satisfy most people. The view from the road is dramatic enough that it’s worth the half hour detour off the motorway to take a look; you can get some great photos without going in. If you are going to explore, however, this is a place for stout walking shoes and lots of energy.

Whichever you opt for, seeing some Greek ruins is an essential part of touring Sicily. They’re an important part of the island’s history and one of the many factors that make it different from the rest of Italy.

Extreme Sicily can challenge and delight: here’s an itinerary to balance the wonder with R&R

Someone once explained to me that Italy gets more extreme the further south you go. If, by Rome, your nerves are a bit on edge from the noise, the traffic and the queue cutting, if the contrast between opulence and grime is grating, if you’re feeling over-stuffed by food and wine … it might be time to stop. If, however, life is just seeming brighter, the sights more magnificent and the dinners ever better, press on. On until, as far south as you can go before you hit Africa, you reach Sicily.

Sicily feels like everything Italian … the good and the bad … distilled to its most powerful essence.

It is incredibly ancient compared to the rest of Italy: the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks all lived here. Want to see some of the best Greek ruins in the world? Forget the Acropolis, come here. Every building in Sicily is built on the bones of past ages, and most of them seem to be crumbling. Even the new ones.

Other than for a few hundred years of glory in the early Middle Ages, the island has been a colony rather than its own boss. The nationalities of the absentee landlords might have changed, but in turns they abused, ignored and siphoned off resources. (Very occasionally, as with whoever built the Villa Romana del Casale, they fell in love with the place and ploughed their own resources into improving it. But this was the exception.) Many Sicilians, including m ancestors, argued that Italian unification was simply another foreign invasion; now the abuse came from Savoy, then Rome, rather than Madrid. Colonial overlords … and the mafia brutes that took advantage of their distance … drove Sicily to such a state that when emigration became a viable possibility for the average person, vast numbers of its people went elsewhere. A vast, empty countryside scattered with abandoned houses is a vision of modern Sicily.

Extremes, age and colonial exploitation have created a place that’s both Italian and distinctly alien. Many places in Sicily remind me more of Tunisia or South Africa than Tuscany or the Veneto. Tourism in Sicily can be challenging. While gleaming new motorways are a testimony to EU improvement projects, local roads can be an adventure. Visual clues that usually tell you “turn around, you’re in a dangerous neighbourhood” don’t work the same way here; a dark alley full of graffiti and rubbish can host upscale jewellery shops or magnificent Baroque oratories. UNESCO heritage town centres are surrounded by hideous, often collapsing post-war housing. Cultural attractions can be light on English explanations; my basic Italian gets used here far more than in the north. And yet, if you love culture, history and food … the foundations of this blog … Sicily delivers rewards out of all proportion to the effort you put in. There is no place else in Europe quite like it.

I decided on two weeks here to celebrate my 60th birthday and our 13th wedding anniversary. (Marrying on your birthday is an excellent way to ensure neither of you ever forget your anniversary.) I wanted something indulgent and celebratory. Something that offered loads of top quality sightseeing with proper R&R and tremendous food. Opera at Palermo’s Teatro Massimo and cooking class with a Duchess in her palazzo was the icing on the cake.

Our itinerary went like this:

Days 1 - 5: Almar Giardino di Costanza, near Mazara del Vallo
The idea was to start the holiday with some restorative pamper time. We flew into Palermo and picked up a car at the airport. Unfortunately, our 90-minute queue at Avis/Budget/Maggiore took only a little less time than our whole drive south. The delay was so extreme we had to modify our plans to visit the Greek ruins at Segesta and content ourselves with a drive by. Which, to be honest, is still quite impressive and offers great photo opportunities without paying for admission.

The hotel is one of those Sicilian contrasts: a lush and luxurious walled complex surrounded by the dry, dusty, ruin- and rubbish-filled agricultural outskirts of Mazara. The few miles between motorway and hotel will make you wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into; once you’re through the gates you’re in another world. An old agricultural estate has been repurposed as luxury hotel and spa. The building is a big white and yellow “U” surrounding gardens, pools and fountains. We upgraded to a pool/garden view, which gave us an enormous balcony with table, chairs and sun loungers. The bedroom featured towering ceilings, an enormous television, arm chairs for watching, and a cheerful bouquet springing from a traditional Sicilian head vase to wish me happy birthday and anniversary. (A cake with burning candle also showed up on the actual day.) The basement … part of it opening onto the lowest level of the garden … features an upscale restaurant and a high-end spa. There’s an indoor swimming pool, hot and cold bathing tubs, saunas, steam rooms, and relaxation rooms all designed in a modern take on Arab-Norman architecture.

In short, it’s the kind of place you don’t really have any need or desire to leave. Even the private beach, accessible by hotel shuttle for morning or afternoon stints, didn’t seem worth the effort. Lots of things on my local possibilities list fell to the competition of napping to spa music and lounging in hot water, namely Trapani and Erice. But a few sightseeing excursions did demand the effort: the Greek ruins at Selinunte, the Greek statue of “the dancing Satyr” in Mazara del Vallo, a look at the salt flats above Marsala and a tasting of that town’s eponymous wine at Florio.

Days 5 - 6: Villa Trigona, Piazza Armerina
The next major stop in the itinerary was the Val di Noto, which would have been a straight 4-hour drive along the southwest coast of Sicily had we gone direct. But a date with a bucket list item demanded a detour. About 40 years ago Professor Jim Packer beguiled me with his Art and Architecture of Ancient Rome class at Northwestern, and his descriptions of the Villa Romana del Casale in the Sicilian Countryside have haunted me ever since. It was worth the detour. (More to come on that in a future article.)

We spent the night at another old agricultural estate turned to tourism. The Villa Trigona isn’t as big or as high-end as the Almar, but it was correspondingly less expensive. The family still owns and runs the place and has done a major renovation in the past few years, so venerable architectural details sit comfortably with fresh plaster and sheet glass walls of modern extensions. Our room, however, was 19th century in all but its electrification: old school wooden furniture, beautiful bed linens, decorative floor tiles, whispy curtains screening french doors to Juliet balconies that looked out over the surrounding woodlands and mountains and down into the front courtyard of the estate house. Another set of French doors led out to our own roof terrace. It was almost a shame to only be here just one night. The family offers dinner in that modern extension. It was hearty and delicious if not memorable, but we were grateful to be able to eat in. Villa Trigona is off winding, mountainous roads 10 minutes from Piazza Armerina that I wouldn’t have enjoyed navigating after dark, and there’s nothing in walking distance. 

Days 6 - 11: Melifra, Ispica
Next came five full days enjoying the Val di Noto, proclaimed a UNESCO world heritage site because of its baroque architecture. All the guidebooks will tell you about the 1693 earthquake that flattened southeastern Sicily, and how the towns in the area rebuilt in a florid Baroque style that makes them gems of the architectural world. What they probably won’t mention is that these exquisite town centres are ringed by large and unattractive sprawls of modern development, that the Val is thick with modern industry and commercial agriculture, and that it’s a harsh landscape of pockmarked limestone peaks and scrubby brush with lots of winding roads between points A and B. This is not the charming hill towns of Tuscany.

The towns, however, are worth the effort. Noto is the most famous and therefore the most crowded; I enjoyed Scicli and Ragusa Ibla (top photo) much more. The Baroque heart of Modica was much bigger than anticipated, and the large crowds socialising on the streets at 11 pm on a Saturday testified to the fact this is a modern, living town, not just a tourist destination. We were there not for the late-night passeggiata but for dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, Accursio, that was one of the highlights of the trip. If you get sick of Baroque towns, there are beaches and a nature reserve where migrating birds … notably flamingoes … pause during their spring and autumn migrations. There will be more all of that in articles to come. 

We stayed in an AirB&B rental called Melifra that was absolutely ideal. It’s on the edge of a modern development on the outskirts of Ispica (this one, unusually, rather attractive … though still cursed with the Sicilian plague of unfinished or unkempt properties, like rotting teeth in the middle of an otherwise gleaming smile). While not usually listed amongst the highlights of the Val di Noto, Ispica has the same baroque heart as its neighbours with a handful of standout buildings. For us, however, its greatest advantages were that it sat in the middle of everything we wanted to see, and the views to the sea are quite spectacular. Even more so when you’re sitting in the hot tub in the roof garden at Melifra, glass of cold local wine in your hand while watching the sunset.

Melifra occupies the top floor of a three-story townhouse at the end of a block; access is up a dramatic winding staircase with a glass roof above. There are two bedrooms, each en suite, and a combined sitting room/kitchen dining area, but the crown jewel is undoubtably that roof garden. In addition to the hot tub there’s a shower, two loungers, a sofa, coffee table and chairs, and a large TV pre-programmed with all the streaming services (you will need your own password to sign in). Someone with highly-attuned interior design sensibilities has been at work here; colour schemes, decorative items, rugs and art have all been selected to complement a single colour scheme.

It was as tasteful as a luxury hotel, but all ours. Hosts Gianfranco and Barbara were fantastic, establishing a WhatsApp group for us for the duration of our stay, flooding us with useful information and responding quickly when we needed information.

I quickly got into the habit of sightseeing during the day, nice lunch out, then back to Melifra for a soak in the hot tub. We’d spend the evenings in the outdoor seating area, nibbling a light dinner, drinking local wine and working our way through “The Rings of Power”. The dramatic landscape here seemed to fit a foray into Middle Earth.

There were only two flies in the Melifra ointment. If you are very tall, this apartment built under the eves may present a hazard. It’s beautifully designed, with skylights with automatic blinds in the roof that can flood the space with sunlight, but my husband whacked his head multiple times before he got used to stooping at the sides of rooms. You’re also about 3/4 of a mile from the town centre so it’s not really easy walking distance for going out. We only went out for dinner once and were preferred the extreme quiet, but this might be an issue for others.

Days 11- 15: L’Olivella B&B, Palermo
Palermo can be hard work: it’s magnificent and exciting, but also noisy and dirty. If Sicily is like the concentrated essence of Italy, Palermo is the further distillation of Sicily. I thought I’d put it at the end of our agenda for when we were well-rested and had grown accustomed to the pace of the island. I also opted for the humblest of our accommodations here, figuring we’d had our luxury and would spend less time “at home” in the city.

L’Olivella is closer to what used to be called a “pensione”: you take one of a suite of rooms let out in your landlady’s house, there’s a modest sitting room, all the guests sharing a table at breakfast and then you’re unlikely to get a glimpse of your host or the other guests until the next morning. The whole place has towering ceilings with a few retaining some lovely frescoes that look to be from the 1930s. The floors are tiled with a beautiful array of Liberty Style (the Italian take on Art Nouveau) patterns. Our bedroom, Lingotto, was generously sized with French doors letting in light from two sides of the building: one side with a tiny balcony just big enough for two chairs and a narrow table. The location is superb. From our balcony we looked into the windows of the archaeological museum. The opera house loomed above the end of the street, between us and its front door were 200 metres of restaurants and artisan shops. A 10 minute stroll took us to Quattro Canti, the sightseeing heart of town.

We had two prime objectives in Palermo: Turandot at the opera and a very special cooking class in a palace in the Kalsa district. We’d already seen the Palatine Chapel and the cathedral and Monreale on a previous trip, so we were free with the rest of our time to explore some of the “Tier Two” sites. I spent a lot of time drinking in outrageous Baroque religious interiors, notably the oratories of Serpotta and the Jesuit church known as the Casa Professoressa. Honouring that rare and wonderful period in Sicilian history when it was the intellectual and artistic heart of Europe, I revelled in the mosaics in La Martorana and the Arab-Norman lines of San Cataldo. Yes, it was very church heavy!

We also spent a very happy morning poking around the Archaeological Museum, which is mostly distinguished by having the best bits of Selinunte under cover. In many ways it’s a shame that this stuff isn’t on site there, as the displays here explain the ruins far better than anything in Selinunte, and the treasures they’ve preserved really bring the place to life. This museum experience towards the end of our trip made our explorations at the beginning even more meaningful.

I could have done so much more. There was a museum of Sicilian tiles on my list, and a day trip to Cefalù. I was disappointed to discover that the traditional puppet shows only happen on weekends, and we were only in town for weekdays. The weather was exquisite and we could have headed to Mondello beach. But it was the end of the trip and we were mindful that we wanted to head home relaxed and refreshed. So multiple-hour, multiple-course lunches with multiple bottles of wine featured more prominently than high-impact sightseeing. About all that food, of course, there are articles ahead.

In coming weeks I’ll cover key sites, food and experiences. This gives you context and big picture for a two-week Italian itinerary I’d happily recommend, and do again.