Baia di Giardini-Naxos

The bay of Giardini-Naxos is the sheltered crescent of coast between Capo Taormina and Capo Schisò, with its sandy shores. It was the roadstead of Sicily's first Greek colony, and today its promenade and fishing heritage shape the seaside character of the town.

Why it matters

The bay explains why the town stands here. Greek navigators chose this indent of coast in the eighth century BC and the municipality records that the broad inlet between Capo Taormina and Capo Schisò served the ancient world as a natural landing where ships could put in. The colony of Naxos grew on the Schisò promontory beside the bay, its shipsheds stood at the water's edge inside the bay, and the anchors recovered from the seabed now stand in the museum beside the shore. Long after antiquity, the same water sustained a fishing and citrus-trading village — the regional tourism portal recalls that until the 1970s this was a quiet fishing town — before the beach became one of the most animated seaside resorts of eastern Sicily. To look at this crescent is to look at the destination whole: geology, archaeology and modern resort life in one sweep of coast.

What to notice

Stand on the promenade and take the geography in: the bay opens south-eastwards, protected by the heights around it, with Capo Schisò by the archaeological area and Capo Taormina framing the coast towards Isola Bella. The bay’s sandy shore fronts the Ionian Sea. Look for the modern bronze Nike of Kalkis in the Schisò quarter, placed there in 1965 by the sculptor Carmelo Mendola to mark the town's twinning with Chalkis, one of the cities tied to the colony's founding story. Below the modern waterline, the past is close: the park authority's study of the naval shipyard found that the ancient coastline ran about 160 metres further inland and the sea stood roughly two metres higher, which is why the Greek slipways now lie behind the beachfront buildings. The seafront and Corso Umberto I remain central to the modern town.

Context and history

Three successive lives have shaped the water here. The earliest belongs to Greek seafaring: the naval arsenal of Naxos, with its four parallel slipways cradling ships on sand ramps, was built within the bay's protection, and painted hull-work is documented by traces of red and blue pigment found on the site. After the colony's fall came centuries of quiet, when the inlet served fishing boats and the shipment of the citrus groves that gave Giardini its name — a life the tourism portal evokes in describing the pre-1970s village. Twentieth-century tourism turned the shoreline into a resort town whose seafront runs for more than a kilometre. The coast continues to balance its beach economy with the surrounding environment.