The Town of Taormina is one of the most beautiful spots of Sicily. Plenty of history and with an uncompromising landscape the little city on the east coast of Sicily is well renown all around the world.
Geography of Taormina
It is located on a hill at 206 m above sea level, suspended between rocks and sea, on a terrace of Mount Tauro, in a scenario of natural beauty, unique for variety and contrasts, on the southern slopes of the Peloritani mountains of the Ionian coast with Etna in the background.
The climate is typically Mediterranean, without excesses of summer heat or winter cold. Summer is long and sunny, but dry, breezy and never sultry. Winter is short and mildly mild and it is the wettest season. Snow is rare, but it has been seen several times over the years during strong cold spells. Worthy of note is the great snowfall of 6-7 January 2017, the most intense for over 50 years.
On the basis of the thirty-year reference average of 1961-1990, the average temperature of the coldest month, January, stands at +11.0 ° C; that of the hottest month, August, is +26.6 ° C.
The History of Taormina
There are many news on the origin of Taormina (Tauromenion, Tauromenium), but uncertain for documentation and reliability.
Roman Empire
Taormina remains under Syracuse until Rome, in 212 BC, does not declare the whole of the Roman province of Sicily. Its inhabitants are considered allies of the Romans and Cicero, in the second oration against Verre, mentions that the city is one of the three “Civitates foederatae” and the appointment “Civis Notabilis”. As a consequence of this, it is not up to its inhabitants to pay tithes or to arm ships and sailors if necessary.
During the Servile War (134 – 132 B.C.) Tauromenium is occupied by insurgent slaves, who choose it as a safe stronghold. Strangled by Pompilius, they resist for a long time even with hunger and yielding only when one of their leaders, Serapion, betraying his companions, lets take the stronghold.
In 36 BC during the war between Sextus Pompey and Octavian, the latter’s troops disembarked at Naxos to resume the city at Sesto Pompeo, which had previously occupied it. To repopulate Tauromenium, after the damage of the war suffered, but also to garrison it, Octavianus, who became Augustus, in 21 BC sends a colony of Romans, faithful to him, and at the same time expels the inhabitants against him.
Strabo speaks of Tauromenion as a small city, lower than Messina and Catania. Pliny and Ptolemy remember the conditions of Roman colony.
Late empire and fall of the empire
According to a widespread legend, with the advent of Christianity, St. Peter destines to Taormina the Bishop Pancrazio, who already lent his work of conversion in the region, which builds the first church on the eastern slopes of the city dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul apostles , determining in fact with the appointment, the headquarters of the first bishopric in Sicily. Moreover, the actual existence of this character does not result from any historical document, apart from the legends: the first mentions date back to after the end of the Muslim domination.
Bishops “very proud for the sanctity of customs, zeal and doctrine”, wrote Vito Amico, succeed one another until the Arab age. Few are the news in this period of time, which includes the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the invasion of the Goths, the presence of the Byzantines, the Arab conquest.
What is certain is that Taormina occupies an important strategic position for the military estate of the surrounding territory: for 62 years it is the last strip of land of the Eastern Roman Empire along with Rometta and several times resists the assaults of the Saracens, until 906.
Siege of 1078 and Norman-Swabian rule
The Grand Conte Ruggero took possession of the city, which conquered Castronovo turned to conquer the Val Demone, besieging the city, through the construction of twenty-two forts in timber: trunks and branches form an insuperable wall; nevertheless the Saracens resist for a long time before capitulating in 1078.
Since 1272 a Giovanni Natoli Baron of Sparta, was governor of Taormina.
When the bishop’s seat was moved to the city, Taormina became a State City, including first in the Diocese of Troina and then in that of Messina.
Follow the events of Sicily, under the Swabians and then under the Aragonese (1282). In 1410 the Sicilian Parliament, one of the oldest in Europe, held its historic session in Taormina, at Palazzo Corvaja in the presence of Queen Bianca of Navarre, for the election of the king of Sicily, after the death of Martino I said the young. In the sixteenth century, Philip IV of Spain granted the city the privilege of permanently belonging to the Crown.
Return of the Bourbons
Defeated the French, Taormina returns under the Spaniards and the Viceroy with the ancient privileges. Later, with the occupation of the Napoleonic troops of Naples and the South and with the transfer of the Bourbon Palace to Palermo, King Ferdinando I of Sicily wanted to thank Taormina for its ancient loyalty to the Bourbons against the French. The King, on an official visit to the faithful Taormina, as a sign of recognition, donated to the mayor of the time, Pancrazio Ciprioti, Isola Bella.
The Bourbons, made easier access to the city, which, since Roman times, took place from the narrow Consular Valeria that climbed between the hills, cutting the promontory of Catrabico, thus creating a coastal road that easily linked Messina to Catania .
On the part of many European nations and famous writers and artists (Goethe, Maupassant, Houel and others) there was an interest in the amenity of the place and its archaeological beauties. From now on Taormina will develop, becoming a place of residence for elite tourism, initially coming mainly from England as Florence Trevelyan (1852-1907), daughter of Edward Spencer Trevelyan (1805-1854) and Catherine Ann Forster (1815-1877 ). After a long journey and a return home, Trevelyan decided to return and live in Taormina that radically transformed together with his district, then marrying Salvatore Cacciola, professor of surgery at the University of Bologna, mayor of Taormina for over twenty years between alternate events, as well as first Grand Master Freemason and finally enlightened theosophist.
From the 19th century to the present day
Miss Florence Trevelyan first helped the La Floresta to expand the first hotel in Taormina for free, Hotel Timeo, and later bought the rock of St. Stephen, turning it into an earthly paradise nicknamed Isola Bella during an argument between her and the German baron and homosexual photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856 – 1931). He bought 87 plots of land to create between 1897 and 1898 the park that baptized “Hallington Siculo” in honor of Hallington Hall, the small village where he had lived, about two miles southwest of the town of Louth, in Lincolnshire. After his death the Park, in order to remain in the hands of the Taorminesi and not the English, was expropriated by Cesare Acrosso, the only male nephew of her husband Salvatore Cacciola, in league with Giovanni Colonna, duke of Cesarò, to whom he was headed Royal Decree Law 528 of 18 February 1923.
From England came King Edward VII in 1906 and in 1908, from Germany characters like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who quoted Taormina in his Journey to Italy (Italienische Reise), the baron photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden, the painter Otto Geleng, Friedrich Nietzsche , since 1882, who wrote Thus Thus spoke Zarathustra, Richard Wagner, Tsar Nicholas I, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany with his cousin Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Aleksandra Fëdorovna Romanova niece of Queen Victoria as daughter of Alice of ‘England with friends, Ignazio Florio and Franca Florio, “the star of Italy” as the Kaiser and friend of Trevelyan called her, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Edmondo De Amicis, the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, Prince Jusupov Feliks with Princess Irina, Archduke Mihail Pavlopic brother of Tsar Nicholas II and bankers, magnates, aristocrats from around the world.
Soon Taormina became famous all over the world, both for its scenic beauty, for its panoramas, for its colors, for the paintings of the snow-capped and smoking Etna that descends to the turquoise sea and that went around the world, but also for its permissiveness, for its “transgression”, for its “learned cenacles”, for the “myth of Arcadia”, for its unbridled “dolce vita”.
The writer Catania Massimo Similar describes a period in which no day passed that Taormina did not happen something “crazy” thanks to his whimsical and famous goers. What was permitted in Taormina created a scandal even in the “international” Capri where, for example, the German weaponry Krupp had tried, without success, to recreate the “Taormini cenacles” in which local ephes and maids were at the center of the “scenes” . Krupp in Capri was overwhelmed by the scandal and a few days later he took his life for shame in Bremen.
Many hotels were built, all run by families in the province of Taormina. The country of fishermen and peasants and wealthy bourgeois became therefore a small town of traders, hoteliers, builders. During World War II it was the seat of the German Wehrmacht Command, so on July 9, 1943, the day of the patron Saint Pancrazio bishop, Taormina suffered two devastating bombings of the allied aircraft that destroyed part of the south and even a wing of the famous hotel San Domenico, where a meeting of the German high command was under way.
Tourism in Taormina
Being an international tourist city, many English spies during fascism had well camouflaged and came out as soon as the Allied troops entered. After the war Taormina was enlarged without altering its natural beauties, and until 1968 it was a purely winter tourist city for a rich and individual tourism, so much so that the best hotels opened in October and closed in June. It was frequented by famous writers such as Roger Peyrefitte, Truman Capote, André Gide, D.H. Lawrence, Salvatore Quasimodo, Tennessee Williams, the Russian Anna Achmatova, from nobles, like Giuliana of Holland, from the royals of Sweden and Denmark, from the President of Finland Urho Kekkonen, from famous and famous people like Soraya, Ava Gardner, Romy Schneider , who also made friends with some charming and hospitable playboys of the place, such as Giovanni Panarello, Robertino Fichera, Dino Papale, as well as Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Dino Grandi, Willy Brandt, Greta Garbo, who spent months in the Taorminesi hotels spending their days , but especially the nights, in the typical nightclubs of the time and continuing, so, that sweet life started with the Belle Époque.
The meeting place for everyone was the Caffè Concerto “Mocambo” of the amusing play boy Robertino Fichera. Robertino, with his extravagant friends, commissioned a mural in the hall of his famous Café, so that they would remain “immortal”, seated next to Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein, the true protagonists of the great taorminese theater, among which, in the front row, the famous Chico Scimone and Dino Papale, the latter founder of the Women’s Tennis Association that “living” humanity, composed of playboys, artists and “crazy”, who “created” every day the “dolce vita” taorminese. “Let the party begin” is the title of the mural. But the party was about to end, and also the earthly life of Robertino.
