Page 404 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

GETTING AROUND: ENNA AND THE INTERIOR

By car The interior’s main roads at least are pretty good and distances not too large,
and with a car you could pick any of the towns and use it as a base for seeing the rest
of the region.

By bus Enna, Caltanissetta and Piazza Armerina are the only towns with frequent bus
connections to the rest of Sicily, so if you’re relying on public transport, you’re pretty
much limited to these places plus a side-trip from Piazza Armerina to Aidone and
Morgantina. It’s more difficult to travel north and west into the mountains by bus,
though there are services out of Enna along the two major routes, the SS120 and
SS121.

Enna

From a bulging V-shaped ridge almost 1000m up, ENNA lords it over the surrounding
hills of central Sicily. One of the most ancient towns on the island, Enna has only ever
had one function: Livy described it as “inexpugnabilis”, and, for obvious strategic
reasons, the town was a magnet for successive hostile armies, who in turn besieged
and fortified it. The Arabs, for example, spent twenty years trying to gain entrance to
Enna before eventually, in 859, resorting to crawling in through the sewers. The

approach to this doughty mountain stronghold is still formidable, the road climbing
slowly out of the valley and looping across the solid crag to the summit and the town.

Enna remains a medieval hill-town at heart, with a tightly packed centre of narrow
streets, small squares and hemmed-in churches, where occasional gaps through the
buildings reveal swirling drops down into the valleys below. Most of Enna’s churches
– even the ones in use – have cracked facades and weeds growing out of improbable

places, but there are some that catch the eye, like fourteenth-century San Giovanni
(behind the much larger San Giuseppe, on Piazza Coppola) which has a Catalan-
Gothic facade and a tower crowned by a little cupola. When all is said and done,
apart from the castle, the all-encompassing views, and the usual desultory pleasures of
provincial town life (like the little street market on Piazza Coppola), there’s little to
keep you here more than a night. However, that night is very definitely worth it – with

some stupendous vantage points from which to watch the sun set, summer evenings
here must count among the most enjoyable in Sicily. Come in winter and you should
expect snow, the wind blowing hard through the streets, and the white slopes beyond
blending with the anaemic stone buildings.