Taormina Province of Messina Sicily Italy
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Taormina

Taormina (Latin: Tauromenium; Ancient Greek: Ταυρομένιον, romanized: Tauroménion) is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Messina, on the east coast of the island of Sicily, Italy. Taormina has been a tourist destination since the 19th century. Its beaches on the Ionian sea, including that of Isola Bella, are accessible via an aerial tramway built in 1992, and via highways from Messina in the north and Catania in the south. On 26–27 May 2017 Taormina hosted the 43rd G7 summit.

The resort was first publicised by a trio of German artists. In 1787 J.W. Goethe discovered the beauties of Sicily and, in particular, of Taormina. He wrote the world known novel “Italian Journey”, in which he describes the beauties of this land and its people and defined Taormina a “patch of paradise”.

The German painter Otto Geleng rose interest in Parisian art galleries exibiting his paintings of these magical landscapes. His contemporary, the young prussian photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden settled down in 1880 and made Taormina famous to all European cultural clubs with his artistic portraits of nude sheperd boys with the volcano Mt. Etna on the backstage.

Since then many important celebrities visited Taormina, electing it as their “escapade place” from chaotic city life. Patrik Brydone D.H. Lawrence, Truman Capote, Alexander Dumas, Anatole France, Andrè Gide, Paul Klee, Guy de Maupassant, Luigi Pirandello, John Steinbeck, Gustav Klimt, Elio Vittorini, Oscar Wilde, Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms spent happy moments here.

In more recent times movie, theatre and music celebrities such as Ingmar Bergmann, Francis Ford Coppola, Leonard Bergman, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Federico Fellini, Cary Grant, Tyrone Power, Gregory Peck, Marcello Mastroianni, Elisabeth Taylor, Woody Allen have spent pleasant and memorable holidays in the Mediterranean pearl.

Source: https://www.taormina.it

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