Taormina - Santa Caterina d’Alessandria

The area was inhabited by the Siculi even before the Greeks arrived on the Sicilian coast in 734 BC to found Naxos. After Dionysius I of Syracuse destroyed Naxos in 403 BC a new settlement got established on the nearby Mount Taurus which gradually grew up into the city of "Tauromenium" (= Taormina). It developed into a prospering city in Greek and later Roman times when it was only one of the three cities in Sicily which enjoyed the privileges of a "civitas foederata".

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Taormina continued to rank as one of the important towns, and because of the strength of its position was one of the last places that was retained by the Byzantine emperors. It was finally taken by the Fatimids in 962 after a siege of 30 weeks. In 1078 it was captured by the Norman count Roger I of Sicily.

In the end of the 18th century Northern European travellers started to visit (and write about) Taormina. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited in 1786, Henry Swinburne´s "Travels in the two Sicilies" was published in 1783. In the 19th century Taormina was part of the "Grand Tour" and international nobility and celebrity visited and often settled.
The Church of Santa Caterina was built in the Baroque style in the first half of the 17th century on the ruins of the Odeon, a small Roman theater.