Isola Bella, Taormina

Isola Bella is a small island tucked into a bay below Taormina on the east coast of Sicily, joined to the beach by a thin strip of pebbles that the sea sometimes covers and sometimes leaves dry, so that it is now an island, now a peninsula. Its rocks are fringed with sea grottoes, its slopes are green with plants that thrive in the mild Ionian climate, and the water around it is famously clear. It has long been called the Pearl of the Mediterranean, a nickname credited to the German photographer Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, whose pictures carried Taormina's image around the world.

In 1806 King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies gave the island to Taormina. In 1890 it was bought by Florence Trevelyan, an Englishwoman who had settled in the town; she built a small house facing the sea and planted rare and exotic species that flourished there. After her it passed through several hands, and in 1954 the brothers Leone and Emilio Bosurgi, owners of a Messina citrus company, bought it and added a cluster of small residences and a tiny pool hidden among rocks and plants. When their company collapsed, the island was put up for auction in the 1980s, but the Sicilian authorities declared it a protected monument, and in 1990 the Region of Sicily bought it.

Since 1998 the island and the neighbouring headlands of Capo Sant'Andrea and Capo Taormina have formed a nature reserve covering about 10.5 hectares. It shelters endemic plants such as Limonium ionicum, a local subspecies of the Italian wall lizard, Audouin's gulls and peregrine falcons, while meadows of Posidonia seagrass and noble pen shells live in the surrounding sea.

Taormina itself perches on a cliff above the bay. Founded as the Greek city of Tauromenion, it is known above all for its ancient theatre, largely a Roman rebuilding laid out on a Greek plan, with Mount Etna rising to the south of the town.

Getting there

The island lies at the foot of Taormina, by the seaside district of Mazzarò; Giarre is about 17 km to the south. Taormina–Giardini station on the coastal railway between Messina and Catania is a short distance away. The closest airport in a straight line is Reggio Calabria (REG), about 40 km away across the Strait of Messina; the usual route is by road from Catania–Fontanarossa Airport (CTA), roughly 50 km to the southwest.