With fewer than ten thousand inhabitants, this village, lying in a valley, is surrounded by landscapes of incredible beauty, going from the green of the woods covering the mountain slopes to the stretches of black lava painted by the volcano with the eruptions of the past. It is an excellent starting point for an exploration of Mount Etna, where expert guides can accompany us along the steepest slopes or easiest paths, showing us landscapes that in our imagination evoke the desolated expanses of the moon.
There are more wonders to come: you only have to turn over a fairly large lava stone to be amazed by the multitude of ladybirds that find shelter underneath.
Without forgetting the mad race that you can do down an almost vertical wall totally covered in very fine black sand that can soften any fall and make rolling down the sides of this majestic and insurmountable volcano an unforgettable experience.
In his Voyage en Sicilie, Dominique Vivant Denon, director of the Louvre in the early 19th century, wrote: “Everything that nature has that is great, everything that it has that is pleasant, everything that it has that is terrible, can be compared to Etna but Etna is incomparable.”
