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Sicily is home to two out of three of Italy's active volcanoes: Stromboli and Etna. The other volcano in Italy is Vesuvius near Naples. Mt Etna is also the tallest volcano in Europe and about 25 percent of the Sicilian population live on its slopes.

Sicily rivals Greece for ancient Greek architectureIn classical times: Sicily was the star of Magna Graecia, Greater Greece.The Valley of the Temples, in the southern city of Agrigento, is where the ancient world comes most vividly alive on the island.The city, ancient Akragas, rivaled Athens in its splendor but may also have been a kind of Los Angeles of the ancient world.Pindar, the ancient poet, declared -- sniffily or with longing, it's hard to say -- that the hedonistic inhabitants of a city "built for eternity ... feasted as if there were no tomorrow.".

You can ski on a volcano: The snow capping one of the most active volcanoes in Europe, constantly smoking and spitting lava, seems unlikely enough.Perhaps even more improbable are the two ski resorts, Rifugio Sapienza and Piano Provenzano, on Mount Etna's flanks.You can ski down the north face of the volcano and jump over lava bumps.

The beaches are black and white: Some of the most dramatic beaches are on the tiny Aeolian Islands, to the north of Sicily.There you'll find midnight-black beaches -- a legacy of volcanic activity -- and sand dunes split with rust-red seams of iron.Or, as on Lipari, the largest of the islands, beaches of silvery-grey pumice stone.

If you meet the Mafia, you won't know it: The Mafia: Popular culture may as well have made it Italy's brand.Unhelpfully, members of Cosa Nostra -- as the Sicilian criminal syndicate is also known -- these days don't often dress the way they do in the movies so, although you may come across them on the island, you probably won't know it.To compound matters, the coppola, the jaunty cap Mafiosi often used to wear, has been adopted as a symbol of resistance by the anti-Mafia movement -- worn at a different angle.But just because the mobsters are relatively inconspicuous doesn't mean they're at home knitting.

Sicily has it's own flag: It was only in February 2000 that the 'trinacria' as we see it above was approved for the Sicilian flag, but the flag itself dates back to 1282, after the Sicilian Vespers of Palermo. It is characterized by the presence of the triskelion (or trinacria; which is also the ancient name of Sicily) in its middle, the (winged) head of Medusa and three wheat ears which symbolizes the fertile land. The three bent legs are supposed to represent the three points of the island Sicily itself(The same three bent legs are used in the Flag of Isle of Man).

Facts About Sicily

Sicily is the biggest region in Italy: and the largest island in the Mediterranean. It has a landmass of 25,708 square kilometers (9,923 square miles). The coastline of the main island is more than 1,000 km (629 miles) long.It would take you about 3 ½ hours to cross the main island from east to west and about 2 ½ hours to cross it from north to south.

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