Here are the available villas for rental in Sicily.

Raining fire and brimstone on my head

From the Mail on Sunday

'You must go now,' said Gioacchino, the captain of our chartered yacht, tapping his watch and smiling his goofy smile. 'Five o'clock, yes? Your guide is waiting for you.'
In other seas and on other boats you may land on an island. On Stromboli, you tie up to a volcano: a massive cone; a giant, black and grey mountain of cinders; a huge, menacing iceberg of burnt rock. Our little anchor was now lodged on its enormous flank, like a staple in an elephant.
We clambered into the rubber dinghy. I turned to Bob as he lowered himself on to my hand. 'What are those things on your feet?' He looked down. There had been instructions to wear hiking boots. He was wearing his Johnny Moke cowboy loafers. 'Well, they'll do,' he muttered. The last of a few Sicilian bathers was picking her matching black-bikinied form and sable froth of curls off the black beach. Bob put a foot in the surf and squeaked.
The eight of us hurried up the pavement-wide lane between the squat, earthquake-proof houses. Behind low clay walls were gardens and caper bushes, weathered boards and broken roofs. Stromboli may lack the polish of Panarea, its neighbour in the Aeolian Islands, where the wealthy have imported an airbrushed lotus-eating style (from Indonesia for some reason), but here, where the hot 'bombs' might fall out of the sky at any time, the place seemed more lived in.
Under the cafe, opposite the church, was a little room papered with giant maps of Etna and Stromboli. It was full of swarthy men concentrating on the serious business of taking money off tourists. A fat bloke in red shorts raised two hands spread out towards me: 'Otto?' 'Si.' He pushed a pink ticket at me and I wrote out my name laboriously in triplicate. 'I just think he wants you to sign it,' said Robert. 'Sign it Otto.'
Red Shorts handed out eight torches and plastic hard hats. He looked up at Bob, and then down at his shoes. He made vigorous gestures. 'No, no,' he said and passed him some ill-fitting climbing boots.
It seemed we eight were now part of a much larger group of about 20. The man with the officiousness of a short Italian possessing something signed in triplicate started gesturing again. 'Duo!'
'I think they want us in some sort of crocodile.' 'How many does that make then?' Robert counted as we marched off. 'Difficult to say. I don't know if that man is coming on the mountain trip or just walking his dog.' We were walking, two by two, along what appeared to be a perfectly ordered promenade. Joggers whistled by. A little boy on a tricycle tootled on ahead. I took off the hard hat and tried to attach it to my rucksack. ... more

Soothed by Sicily's sensuous charm

From the Daily Mail

Mid-afternoon in Sicily. The sun beats down; the only sound is of whirring cicadas. The tiny station of Enna is deserted for the siesta. In the bar a stubbled barman pours espresso, and a three-legged dog hops across to make my acquaintance.
The suspicion that someone from the Sicilian equivalent of Central Casting has made arrangements for my reception grows with the arrival of the local taxi driver, a Mafioso type in wraparound sunglasses. We race up the hill and pull up in Enna's town square with a squeal of brakes.
'Ecco!' grunts the driver. We're here. Now that's the way to arrive in small-town Italy.
Taking a train around Sicily is the best way to appreciate the charm, and people, of this ancient, quirky island - and the beach is never too far away. What's more, train travel won't send your blood pressure soaring, unlike driving. In a taxi heading to Palermo's Stazione Centrale, I'd lurched and swerved through the gridlocked traffic as my driver's temperature rose faster than that of the capital's sweltering streets.
The Sicilians have an expression for this situation: 'Che camurria!' which translates as 'I can't stand it! Let's get moving!' I couldn't stand it, either.
The 12.05 diretto to Enna was waiting at the platform, a modern diesel train with bright yellow destination plates on each carriage. We left on time, running along Sicily's sparkling north coast before climbing inland through hills carpeted with wild flowers.
My travelling companions were a group of schoolchildren, some peasant women dressed all in black, two priests and a moustachioed gentleman in a battered trilby. He offered me a drink of wine from his bottle, bowed, and disappeared at the next station, doffing his hat. I'd been on the Sicilian rails less than an hour and already I felt among friends. ... more

In Sicily with the Roman bikini girls

From the Mail on Sunday

Sicilians consider themselves to be a different sort of Italian, and we all know what that means. Sicily, for instance, attracts a distinctly different type of tourist from the rest of Italy.
The elegant cliff-side pool of my Palermo hotel, with its built-in fragment of ancient Greek temple, was populated by a familiar variety of thickset American: burly, greying at the temples, invariably with an implausibly uplifted blonde in tow.
'Hey Mikey, my main man. Whaddya doin' here?' 'I'm in town to hook up with Fat Tony. Louie and the boys are flying in from Chicago tonight to see to Santorini, y'knowwhaddamean?' What did he mean? Perhaps he and his friends were simply interested in the finer points of Doric architecture.
That's the way it goes in Sicily: fragments of the old contrasting with the brash and new. But what fragments. Long before the Romans, Sicily was Greek, the land of Archimedes and Dionysus, and the Greek legacy survives in a series of stunning set-pieces.
There are mighty temples to rival the Parthenon in the hills at Segesta, by the sea at Selinunte (sacked by the Carthaginians in the 5th century BC, the ruins still piled high) and on a ridge below the town of Agrigento. The latter, a complex of huge temples several miles across, is Sicily's most famous site, but I preferred the other two.
Agrigento's temples are fenced off from the tourist hordes, with the traditional competing irritations of ice-cream vans, over-flowing bins, wasps and traffic. Segesta and Selinunte have rural charm, and you can clamber over the remains of a civilisation two-and-a-half millennia old to your heart's content.
The Romans are remembered in Sicily though, thanks to Piazza Armerina, the palatial home of the Emperor Maximianus, who ruled in tandem with Diocletian in the 3rd century. The walls and roof were swept away in a medieval mudslide, but the mud preserved the most outstanding collection of Roman mosaics anywhere, which remained invisible until the Fifties.
Here, countless millions of tiny coloured tiles illuminate an area 3,500 square yards across. There are vibrant scenes of 3rd century Roman life, with clear contemporary echoes. Ten girls in skimpy bikinis play ball and work out with weights in a gym. Huntsmen follow the hounds in pursuit of a fox. Lions and elephants are brought from Africa to be displayed in the circus. Crowds roar on racers in the national stadium. A half-dressed young couple embrace.
There can be few places so guaranteed to create both a feeling of empathy with our ancestors and a sense of our own mortality. ... more

From Don 'til Dusk

From the Daily Mail

When we arrived at Bar Eden in the central square of Forza d'Agro, high in the eastern Sicilian hills, it was eerily quiet. Barely a soul stirred in the mid-afternoon heat.
There was not much to the place: just a few tables, a mute television set and an impassive bartender.
But there, hanging on one wall, was a set of black and white photographs taken 30 years ago, each depicting scenes from the filming of The Godfather movie in this remote village.
One picture had a youthful Al Pacino marching through the square; another had the director, Francis Ford Coppola, playing the tuba.
Coppola's masterpiece about the Corleones - an Italian-American mafia family - used a number of locations on the island.
It was easy to see why Forza d'Agro had been one of them.
With its winding, cobbled streets, its astonishing views of the Mediterranean, its ruined castle and ornate church, it perfectly evoked the rich beauty and sense of the past which so infuses the island.
'What makes this beautiful country so violent?' Anthony Corleone asked of his father Michael, the character played by Al Pacino, when they are in Sicily. 'History,' replied Michael.
The island's long history of oppression and occupation has created a culture which still views outsiders with suspicion.
It is a place where Anglo-Saxon expectations seem naive.
Timetables, directions and traffic regulations - all so necessary to tourists - can be confusing because, to Sicilians, they are transient. ... more

Doctor in the villa

After five years of filming the House Doctor television series in Britain, I understand why people here are forever going on holiday.
It's called survival. Coming from California and Mexico, I took blue sky and sunshine for granted. But not any longer.
Deciding where to go is an interesting process. I tend to steer clear of packaged trips, but when I was presented with the option of a week in a villa in Sicily, I began some research.
I learned that Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean (translate to miles of beautiful coastline), has an incredible history which includes Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims and a brief period of British rule (translate to incredible architectural and cultural mix) and that the weather is almost guaranteed to be perfect at this time of year.
Then I received an e-mail from UK agency Tuscany Now, with information and photos of the villa.
The word villa can have many meanings, but this was the real thing.
Torre Castelvetrano, a 250-year-old olive 'fattoria' in the district of Trapani, beautifully restored, surrounded by olive groves and orchards, with a lake and swimming pool.
Within days, my partner Timothy and I were zooming down the autostrada in our hire car, heading for Castelvetrano.
Its outskirts were uninspiring, to say the least - row upon row of bland shops and houses.
But as we rounded the corner we gasped. Surrounded by lush countryside and flanked by two palms, a magnificent stone tower gleamed in the sun. Was it possible this storybook vision was our home for the week? ... more