Three overlooked Italian islands

From an isolated spot for hiking to a cultural hotspot with a pretty harbour.

Procida © iStockphotos
Procida: a picture-postcard-perfect island just off Naples
(Image credit: Procida © iStockphotos)

“Time in western Sicily is peculiar,” says Horatio Clare in Condé Nast Traveller. “The map of the Mediterranean was once, to many, the chart of the known world.” And right in the centre of it all was Sicily. Look at the island this way, and “the sleepy oceanfront smelling of evaporating rain on marble pavements, tobacco smoke, fish and seaweed” becomes not the obscure backwater that in some ways it has since become, but “the root of Western civilisation”.

Greek, Norman, Arab and Bourbon rulers have all come and gone. You can observe the cultural remnants in the evening passeggiate – “an almost sacred custom, a see-and-be-seen stroll taken for its own sake” – in Mazara, western Sicily’s “ancient gateway and one of the towns I love best”.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Chris Carter
Wealth Editor, MoneyWeek

Chris Carter spent three glorious years reading English literature on the beautiful Welsh coast at Aberystwyth University. Graduating in 2005, he left for the University of York to specialise in Renaissance literature for his MA, before returning to his native Twickenham, in southwest London. He joined a Richmond-based recruitment company, where he worked with several clients, including the Queen’s bank, Coutts, as well as the super luxury, Dorchester-owned Coworth Park country house hotel, near Ascot in Berkshire.

Then, in 2011, Chris joined MoneyWeek. Initially working as part of the website production team, Chris soon rose to the lofty heights of wealth editor, overseeing MoneyWeek’s Spending It lifestyle section. Chris travels the globe in pursuit of his work, soaking up the local culture and sampling the very finest in cuisine, hotels and resorts for the magazine’s discerning readership. He also enjoys writing his fortnightly page on collectables, delving into the fascinating world of auctions and art, classic cars, coins, watches, wine and whisky investing.

You can follow Chris on Instagram.