Catania: a listed volcano and a rebuilt Baroque town

Two UNESCO listings meet in Catania and they are about different things: Mount Etna, inscribed in 2013 for its geology, and the late Baroque town itself, one of eight rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693³.

The listed part of Etna is the empty part

Mount Etna has been on the World Heritage List since 2013 under natural criterion viii. The listed property covers the uninhabited summit portion of the volcano, 19,237¹ hectares, with a buffer zone of 26,220¹ hectares around it.

Its eruptive record is documented over at least 2,700¹ years, one of the longest continuous series anywhere. That record, not the shape or the view, is what the listing recognizes.

The practical reading: what UNESCO protects here starts above the last villages. The vineyards, the lava walls and the pistachio terraces on the flanks are outside the property and inside the park.

The park: 59,000 hectares, and the first in Sicily

The Parco dell'Etna was established by decree of the President of the Sicilian Region on March 17, 1987, the first regional park created in Sicily, covering 59,000² hectares with its seat at Nicolosi.

The park is roughly three times the listed area, which is the number that tells you where you will actually spend your day. Almost every road, refuge and marked path on the volcano is park, not World Heritage core.

Access rules are the missing piece. The park does not publish its zoning or the rules for reaching the summit craters, so the altitude above which a volcanological guide becomes compulsory is not stated on this page.

Catania, one of eight Baroque towns

Catania is one of the eight towns that make up the UNESCO property "Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto", inscribed in 2002 under criteria i, ii, iv and v. The others are Caltagirone, Militello Val di Catania, Modica, Noto, Palazzolo Acreide, Ragusa and Scicli.

All eight were rebuilt after the Val di Noto earthquake of 1693³, which is why the historic center has one architectural date rather than five. The black lava stone used in Catania makes its version of that Baroque unlike the honey colored version at Noto or Ragusa.

Walking the old center with that in mind changes what you notice: not individual monuments, but the consistency of a town designed at once.

Building a day out of the two

The volcano and the town are two halves of one day, and each has its own half: the summit clouds over from midday, the lava stone streets only fill up after dark.

Mornings belong to the mountain, where cloud builds from midday. Afternoons and evenings belong to the lava stone streets down here, which hold the heat and come alive late.

More in Catania, Etna and how tall Etna is.

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