Isola Bella (Sicily)

Where it sits. Isola Bella is a small rock island of about one hectare lying a few dozen metres off the shore of the bay of Mazzarò, directly below Taormina on the Ionian coast of Sicily. A tombolo of coarse grey pebbles links it to the mainland; the bar is walkable in calm conditions and submerged to knee or thigh depth after a blow, so the island is sometimes an island and sometimes a peninsula, which is part of its character. The setting is dramatic in a way photographs undersell: the coastal cliff rises almost 200 metres behind the beach to the Taormina ledge, so the cove sits in a bowl of rock with the open sea in front. The water is clear, deep quickly, and cold enough in early season to concentrate the mind.

The story behind it. The islet was crown property, granted to the town of Taormina in the early nineteenth century, and in 1890 it was bought by Florence Trevelyan, a Scottish aristocrat who had settled in Taormina after leaving Britain and who also laid out the town's public gardens. She built a modest house against the rock, terraced the slopes, and planted an eccentric collection of exotic species, so the vegetation today is a mix of native Mediterranean maquis and her introductions. The island later passed to the Bosurgi family, who extended the buildings and cut rooms into the rock. In 1990 the Sicilian region expropriated it after a long legal fight, and in 1998 it was declared a nature reserve. The house now serves as a small natural-history museum, and the paths through the terraces are open on a ticket.

On screen. The bay is the beach of The White Lotus season two (2022). The production, whose fictional resort was the San Domenico Palace up in Taormina, shot shoreline sequences here and at the private beach of the Villa Sant'Andrea hotel a few hundred metres north, and the tombolo and the wooded rock appear repeatedly in the series' establishing shots. The cove had a screen life before that: Taormina's bay features in Luc Besson's free-diving film The Big Blue (1988), and the island has been used for Italian television, advertising and fashion shoots for decades, largely because there is no other place on the Sicilian coast where a beach, a wooded islet, a cliff and a hilltop town stack into one frame.

What you actually see today. Two things share the name and they cost different amounts. The beach is public in its central section, with private lidi renting loungers and umbrellas to either side, and it is pebble rather than sand — footwear matters. The island itself requires a ticket at a small kiosk at the landward end of the tombolo; the visit is a loop of narrow stepped paths through the terraces, past cactus, ficus and Trevelyan's plantings, with the museum rooms and viewpoints over the two arms of the bay. It takes forty minutes at a slow walk. Snorkelling around the rock is good — the drop-offs hold sea bream, wrasse and octopus — and boats run from Mazzarò to the Grotta Azzurra and the coves toward Capo Sant'Andrea.

Getting there and timing. From Taormina, the cable car descends from Via Pirandello to Mazzarò in a couple of minutes and runs frequently through the day; from the top station it is a walk of some ten minutes down to the cove, including a long flight of steps. Local buses also serve the coast road, and there is limited paid parking. The steps and the pebble bar rule out step-free access entirely. The cove faces east, so the sun leaves the beach early in the afternoon while the sea stays lit — a good reason to swim late. Late May, June and September are the sensible months. In July and August the beach fills by nine in the morning and the tombolo becomes a queue.

Worth knowing. The reserve is managed as a protected area rather than a resort, so the island closes in poor weather and can shut for maintenance; boats are not allowed to land on it, and the swimming areas around the rock are marked. The pebbles hold heat, the shade on the beach is minimal, and the closest food is on the road above rather than on the sand. The island's museum rooms are modest and the ticket is essentially a conservation charge rather than an entry fee for a collection, which is worth understanding in advance: what is being paid for is the path, the terraces and the right to stand on a private-looking rock that the region bought back for the public after a decade in the courts. Sunset is watched from the Taormina ledge above rather than from the cove, which faces the wrong way, and the last cable car down the hill leaves earlier than most visitors expect.