Page 220 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

For a really great coastal hike, head to the Cave Caolina, a quarry of multicoloured
clays used as pigments by the ancient Greek artist responsible for the polychrome
painted vases in Lipari’s museum, known simply as “the Lipari painter”. From here an
easy-to-follow path leads down through the quarry, and back to San Calogero, passing
sulphurous fumaroles, a hot spring, and a couple of places where you can scramble
down the cliffs for a swim.

< Back to The Aeolian Islands

Vulcano

Closest of the Aeolians to the Sicilian mainland, and just across the narrow channel
from Lipari, VULCANO is the usual first port of call for ferry and hydrofoil services
from Milazzo, and as such suffers the bulk of the archipelago’s day-trippers. As on
more distant Stromboli, volcanic action defines the island, with the main crater
hanging menacingly over its northern tip and constant vapour trails issuing from its
flanks. It’s a very old volcano, in the last, smoking, phase of its life, and you often

don’t even have to disembark to experience its other apparent trait – the disconcerting
sulphurous, rotten-egg smell that pervades the island’s entire inhabited area when the
wind is in the right direction.

The volcano was threatening enough to dissuade anyone from living here before the
eighteenth century, since when there have been some hasty evacuations – subterranean
activity is still monitored round the clock, as Vulcano is felt to be more potentially

dangerous than the constantly active Stromboli. In the nineteenth century a Scot called
Stevenson bought the island to exploit the sulphur and alum reserves, but all his work
was engulfed by the next major eruption. Although the volcano’s last gasp of activity
occurred between 1886 and 1890, its presence gives Vulcano an almost primeval
essence. Everything here is an assault on the senses, the outlandish saffron of the earth

searing the eyes, as violent as the intense red and orange of the iron and aluminium
sulphates that leak out of the ground in the summer, to be washed away with the first
autumn rains.

However, none of the summer trippers and B-list celebs bronzing themselves on
Vulcano’s black-sand beaches are discouraged, while many others come to dip
themselves in the sulphurous mud baths. That said, it’s difficult to recommend a

night’s stay, even if the lingering smell doesn’t put you off. Accommodation is
overpriced, while restaurants tend to command exorbitant prices for barely edible
food. In fact, you can climb the crater, and cycle or bus across the island and back, all
on a day-trip from the far pleasanter Lipari, just a ten-minute hydrofoil ride away.