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Subsequently it is recommended you follow the side alley on the uphill side of the square. Marked ‘Salita Castello’ it leads through restaurant premises to an even higher lookout point with stunning all-round views (1hr total). The gently sloping flanks of Monte Etna provide a particularly interesting landscape even at this distance: the succession of lava flows can easily be made out, some of the most ancient clearly reaching right down to the coast around Catania.

Once back down at the piazza for the return walk, direct your steps downhill towards Piazza Duomo and the immaculately restored church. Take the lane under an arch, then follow signs down steps for the Pizzeria Le Mimose. After crossing two minor roads you quickly reach the lower edge of Castelmola, and close on hand left is a wide flight of steps high over the motorway. The way quickly becomes a lovely panoramic path winding through abandoned gardens thick with all manner of aromatic herbs, and olive and fruit orchards, now the domain of towering prickly pear, ablaze with pretty yellow blooms in early summer. A curve left leads through an old arch in view of a hillside pitted with the ancient tombs of the Sicel necropolis dating back to the Iron Age (10th–7th centuries BC), and now at risk from encroaching construction above.