It combines sun; good, plain food; natural beauty; and enough history, art and architecture to leave me reeling. What it doesn't promise is a selection of great hotels. Apart from a handful of deluxe establishments in the larger cities and in Taormina, Sicily's innkeepers have been getting a bad press since Goethe bemoaned their shortcomings two centuries ago. However, on a spring visit around the island, my husband, Ken, and I saw old hotels being overhauled and old buildings morphing into new hotels with admirable results.
We weren't looking for grandeur as much as comfort, charm and a sense of place, and in a day stay we found three special hotels outside the well-known standards in Palermo and Taormina. Starting from Palermo, we circled the island clockwise. After Taormina, we headed for Syracuse.
This city, which to fifth-century Greeks was New York to Athens's Washington, traces its origins beyond history to myth, romantic myth at that.
The comely nymph Arethusa, pursued across Arcadia by the river god Alpheus, implored Artemis, goddess of virginity, for protection. The goddess answered her prayers, transforming Arethusa into a fountain, in which form she fled to Sicily's eastern coast, settling on the island of Ortygia, the heart of what became ancient Syracuse. Determined to woo her, Alpheus channeled himself across the Ionian Sea, forever to mix his waters with hers.
Understandably then, a romantic spirit imbues Syracuse, in spite of Athens's bloody defeat there in the Peloponnesian War. Not a half mile from Arethusa's supposed fountain stands the room Grand Hotel. Its four-story bulk sits comfortably against the backdrop of Ortygia's medieval fortifications. We admired the hotel's neo-Gothic stone details as we parked. Slipping through the snazzy automatic glass doors, we were taken aback by the interior -- a glossy revamp, about five years old, of the pre-World War I hotel.
