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Atena S.a.s.  Via Silipigni 35 - 98039  Taormina ( Me )

Taormina

Taormina, the pearl of the Ionian sea, is 205 metres above sea level on terraced land located above a wonderful blue sea, with a fascinating view of Mount Etna. Five hills make its crown: Mount Croce (225 metres above sea level), Mount Petraro (476 metres above sea level), Mount Castelmola (398 metres above sea level), Mount Ziretto (581 metres above sea level) and Mount Venere (885 metres above sea level). Taormina is a destination of tourists from all over the world for its mild climate, its picturesque sceneries, its historical and cultural monuments. "An edge of paradise on earth" as it was defined more than two centuries ago by one of its most famous visitors Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Wilhelm Gloeden, the famous baron-photographer, liked to photograph the young shepherds who pastured their sheep around the ancient Saracen castle, while the sunset lit up with a fiery red the Greek theatre of which Ottone Geleng would paint his famous pictures. Down below, the quiet and picturesque "Isola Bella", in the bay which a century after, would welcome the Keiser's "palace-boat". A German poet (Goethe), a German baron-photographer (Gloeden), a German painter (Geleng), a German emperor (Wilhelm III): the tour fortune of Taormina is linked to these German people. Goethe discovered it in 1787 and he devoted an exalting page of his famous "Journey to Italy" ("the audience has never seen anything like this view" wrote Goethe after having admired, from the ancient theatre, the smoking snow-covered Etna and the charming Naxos Bay); Wilhelm von Gloeden publicized his photos of Taormina views (and above all, the naked young men photos wearing only crowns of laurel which drove the polished Berlin Krupp's salons mad); The Keiser Wilhelm II, called nobles and men of high finance attention to Taormina; the painter Geleng, to himself attributes the birth of Taormina hotel business. Oscar Wilde, the most eccentric dandy of the English literary nineteenth century, two years older than Gloeden, arrived in Taormina thirteen years after Gloeden, in 1891. Thirty-seven-year-old and "handsome like a Greek god" (as the baron-photographer Gloeden described him). Fascinated by the baron Gloeden's photograph's of naked bodies and by the idea of beauty expressed by them. Wilde went back to London after a month holiday, with his bag full of those young men's pictures; he, himself (as he told cheerfully in London salons) had adorned most of them. To mention another famous visitor among many who visited Taormina, Edmondo De Amicis, in his "Records of a voyage in Sicily", in 1905, enchanted by Taormina views and monuments cried: "I little believe in hell, but I believe in Paradise because I have seen it… and it is this!".