Sicily: east loop, west loop, or both

Decide your loop before you book flights

The island has two gateways, and they lead to two quite different holidays. Catania opens the east: Mount Etna, Taormina, the baroque south-east and the Ionian coast. Palermo opens the west: Norman-Arab architecture, the temple sites, Trapani's salt pans and the wilder western beaches. The single most valuable booking decision is an open-jaw flight — into one, out of the other — which lets you drive a straight line across the island instead of doubling back on the interior motorway.

With five to seven nights, do one half properly. With nine or more, the coast-to-coast crossing becomes comfortable, with a night in the middle around Agrigento or the interior hill towns to break the drive.

The east: volcano, baroque and Greek theatres

Etna is the anchor. It is an active volcano with a managed visitor infrastructure: a road up the southern flank to the cable car and 4x4 transfer, and a quieter, more forested northern approach. Conditions change fast and access to the summit area is controlled and sometimes suspended, so treat the high-altitude portion as weather-dependent and keep a spare day if it matters to you. Even without the summit, the lower slopes offer lava-field walks, old craters and some of Italy's most distinctive wine estates on volcanic soil.

Taormina is the east's glamour town: a cliff-top terrace with a Greek theatre framing the volcano, beautiful and undeniably expensive and busy. Down the coast, Catania is its opposite — black lava-stone baroque, a ferocious fish market, the best-value eating in the region. Further south, Ortigia, the island-core of Syracuse, is the most liveable base on the east coast, and the baroque towns of Noto, Modica and Ragusa form a compact triangle of honey-coloured stone rebuilt after a seventeenth-century earthquake. Modica's chocolate tradition and Ragusa Ibla's ravine setting are both reason enough to stay overnight rather than day-trip.

The west: temples, mosaics and salt

Palermo rewards patience. It is loud, layered and occasionally chaotic, with Norman palaces, Byzantine mosaics, Arab domes and street-food markets within a short walk of each other. Stay central, walk in the mornings, and take a taxi at night rather than driving; the historic centre's traffic and parking defeat most visitors. Just outside the city, Monreale's cathedral holds one of the great mosaic interiors in Europe.

West and south from there: Trapani and the salt pans, the hilltop village of Erice, the beaches and Greek ruins around Segesta and Selinunte, and — the island's headline archaeological site — the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento, best visited at opening or in the last hour of light when the Doric columns glow and the temperature is survivable.

Driving: what to expect

• Motorways are fine. The coastal autostrade are fast and well-surfaced; some sections are tolled.
• Interior roads are slow. Mountain routes wind, and satellite navigation estimates are optimistic. Assume a third longer than quoted.
• Town centres are restricted. Historic cores in Palermo, Catania, Syracuse and the baroque towns have camera-enforced access zones. Park outside and walk in.
• Book automatics early. They are a small share of the Sicilian fleet and sell out in high season.
• Check the fuel policy and excess at pick-up, and photograph the car from all sides before you leave the bay.

Trains do connect Palermo, Catania, Syracuse and Messina, and buses cover the main intercity corridors reasonably well. A car-free Sicily is possible if you limit yourself to those cities plus Taormina, but the temple sites, the hill towns and the coast between them will stay out of reach.

Eating, and when to go

Sicilian food is its own cuisine rather than a regional variation: North African spicing, Arab-influenced sweets, citrus, almonds, pistachio, sardines, swordfish, and street food that ranges from chickpea fritters to spleen sandwiches. Markets are the cheapest education — Catania's fish market and Palermo's Ballarò and Capo markets in particular. Breakfast means granita with a brioche on the east coast in summer, and nobody will judge you for having it twice.

Spring is the island at its best: wildflowers, warm days, cool evenings, open sites. Autumn brings the grape and olive harvest and warm sea. Midsummer is hot enough inland to make archaeological sites genuinely hard work, and coastal towns fill with Italian holidaymakers in August. Winter is mild and quiet, with some coastal businesses closed and mountain roads on Etna occasionally snowbound.