Activities in Catania

The Catania Opera Season at Teatro Massimo Bellini is one of Sicily's premiere cultural events, running annually from October to June. The programme features full-scale opera productions, ballet, and symphonic concerts in one of Italy's most celebrated opera houses.

Catania Underground offers guided tours through the labyrinth of lava tunnels, ancient cisterns, and aqueduct channels hidden beneath the city streets. These subterranean spaces reveal how successive lava flows, earthquakes, and urban rebuilding created a hidden second city underfoot.

Mount Etna, Europe's tallest and most active volcano at 3,357 metres, looms over Catania and is the city's most iconic natural attraction. Day trips from Catania reach the Rifugio Sapienza base station (1,900 m) and, with a cable car and guide, the summit craters at over 3,000 metres.

Catania is widely regarded as Sicily's street-food capital. A self-guided tour through the old centre — from La Pescheria to Via Plebiscito — reveals arancini, cartocciate, cipollina, horse-meat sandwiches, and the city's signature "seltz, limone e sale" fizzy lemon drink.