Set & Asphalt

The Iblean hills look like nowhere else in Sicily. Dry-stone walls, carob trees, back roads that don't appear on maps. Then Noto emerges like a Baroque stage set — not by chance Mike White chose it. The afternoon light on Palazzo Ducezio is exactly what you see in the show. Short day, unhurried pace.

All of Sicily from east to west. The landscape changes three times: first clay hills and wheat, then white salt flats and windmills along the coast, then Trapani appearing from the water like a tongue of land suspended between two seas. This is the longest stage — 270 km, 6 to 7 hours. We leave punctually. The Trapani coast is where Garth Davis found first-century Judea for his film with Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix. It's not hard to see why.

A hundred kilometres. One thing to see — but worth the trip on its own. The Doric temple of Segesta rises from a hillside with nothing around it. No other buildings, no context, just stone and sky. This is where Indiana Jones found his Syracuse. The afternoon is yours in Trapani: fish market, salt pans, flamingos.

An hour of open sea, then Favignana rises from the water like the idea of an island. Rocky coastline, black and white, water that changes colour every hundred metres. This is where Nolan filmed The Odyssey with Matt Damon and Tom Holland using new IMAX technology. Scholars believe Homer imagined Odysseus landing here with his crew. The film opens in July 2026. We ride these rocks in the season after.

North of San Vito Lo Capo the landscape goes vertical. White limestone cliffs over the sea, the Zingaro Reserve stretching toward Castellammare, then the SS113 coastal road with the sea always to the right. The Tonnara del Secco is where Indiana Jones ends — peeling walls, ruins, morning light. Cefalù arrives like a reward.

You leave the sea and climb. The SS120 — the Targa Florio road — rises immediately. Petralia Sottana at a thousand metres, beech forests, hairpin bends that don't end. Then the descent toward Palermo and Porta Nuova — the monumental arch that James Mangold turned into Greece with CGI. The most interesting thing: up close it looks exactly like what it is.

No cinema today. Just roads. The Nebrodi are what riders mean when they say "Alpine roads without the Alpine tourists": continuous curves and hairpins on the SS289, oak and beech forests, plateaux you don't expect. Monreale lasts thirty minutes. The Nebrodi last all day. Lunch is at a trattoria with no English menu. That's a selling point.

The SS185 is among the five most beautiful roads in Sicily — the Sella Mandrazzi pass, landscapes that change every kilometre, Novara di Sicilia worth the detour alone. The Alcantara Gorge is black basalt and freezing Etna water. Taormina is Taormina — the White Lotus's Corso Umberto, the terrace where Le Grand Bleu left its mark. It ends well.