Acitrezza..Acicastello..Acireale…

...a land of myths and legends

“Cyclops pursued and hurled a massive rock, torn from the hill, and though its merest tip reached Acis, yet it crushed and smothered him.” This excerpt from Ovid's Metamorphoses is as good a place as any to start discovering how much Greek mythology was set in Sicily . The extract comes from the story of Acis, a mortal youth and Galatea, a Nereid sea goddess, whose love so infuriated Polyphemus on the foothills of Mount Etna that he killed the unfortunate Acis.

Galatea, distraught and heartbroken, turned him into a gushing river flowing from the towering volcano all the way down to the Ionian Sea , where the two lovers were thus forever reunited. The present day River Aci forks into several places before ending into its ultimate destination, crossing the towns dotting its path from Acireale to Aci Trezza to Aci Castello...

Visitors to the Acis, Aci Trezza and Aci Castello can marvel at their fascinating Faraglioni, said to be the setting of I Ciclopi, or Cyclops, where a group of large rocks stand stoically, emerging from the depths of the sea, testimony to another of Polyphemus' apoplectic outbursts of violence: “Rage rose up in him at my (Odysseus) words. He wrenched away the top of a towering crag and hurled it in front of our dark-prowed ship. The sea surged up as the rock fell into it; the swell from beyond came washing back at once and the wave carried the ship landwards and drove it towards the strand.” Of course we all know that Odysseus escaped, but the rocks remain today for all to see.