Motta Camastra, Sicily: the Alcantara Gorges and a Godfather hill village

Sheer black walls of basalt rising twenty-five metres above an icy river: the Gole dell'Alcantara, one of the most spectacular natural sights in all of Sicily, lie within the territory of the little hill village of Motta Camastra, in the province of Messina. The columns of dark prismatic rock were not carved by water but formed when lava from Etna cooled suddenly against the river thousands of years ago.

The gorges and the river

The gorge runs for some four hundred metres, and in summer visitors wade and raft through the green pools known as the gurne. The whole valley is protected as the Alcantara river park, and a nearby lava cave, the Grotta dei Cento Cavalli, adds to the area's volcanic curiosities.

A village clinging to the rock

Above the canyon, Motta Camastra itself is a tiny medieval borgo of around 770 people, its houses pressed together on a sandstone ridge at 450 metres, with narrow lanes climbing to the 16th-century mother church of San Michele Arcangelo. The settlement grew up around a castle held from the Middle Ages by the Linguida family, and its dramatic setting so impressed Francis Ford Coppola that he filmed scenes of The Godfather here in 1972.

Getting there

The village sits inland in the Alcantara valley roughly fifteen kilometres from the resort town of Taormina, with Etna and the Ionian coast both within easy reach by car.