Mary Richardson / Special to American Press

“I sure would like to live in a palace with a vaulted ceiling,” I said thoughtfully, looking up from my book on Renaissance Italian architecture. “Can you remodel our house?” I asked my husband.

“Why don’t you just rent a place with a vaulted ceiling and try it out first,” he said, not seeming to pay all that much attention to me.

So I did. In Sicily.

Through www.Rent Villas.com, I found a perfect villa with a barrel-vaulted ceiling that dated back to the 15th century. Mount Etna loomed above us, dominating the landscape as befitting a huge, active volcano.

The owner, Phil Restaino, had remodeled the villa to include hot water, air conditioning and a modern kitchen. That was good, because I wanted authentic Italian architecture — but not 15th-century plumbing.

Although the villa was hard to leave each day (picture breakfasts of freshly made ricotta cheese and homemade Italian bread, with butterflies flitting about the orange trees), we wanted to see as much of Sicily as we could in one week.

So we rented an Opel. It was tiny, but then, the roads were narrow, so it worked out.

We started our sightseeing only a few miles from our villa, in Taormina. Taormina is perched near the top of a mountain and has a lovely Greco-Roman theater overlooking the Ionian Sea. It is also somewhat touristy. The center of town is closed to motor traffic, and the narrow old streets are lined with tourist shops. I bought a pair of long lapis earrings, which were a bargain. “I should have bought more,” I later complained to Joe, who again didn’t seem to pay much attention.

The next day we prepared to climb Mount Etna. It was cold, but I was wearing my most recent purchase — a black long-sleeved T-shirt with “Taormina” spelled out in rhinestones. (Joe thought that the rhinestones across my chest didn’t look very hiking gear-ish, but he agreed that the dangling lapis earrings could keep one’s ears warm.)

However, as we wound up the mountain road to where the trails started, it started to rain. Then snow. By the time we got to the top, the trails had been closed. So we headed south, to sunny Siracusa.

Little villages built of lava and stone cling to many cliffs along the mountains of Sicily. This woman lives in the tiny village of Motta Camastra located in the shadow of Mount Etna. (Joe Richardson/Special to the American Press)

Siracusa, the ancient Syracuse, was the most important and beautiful city in the Hellenistic world. Today it is mainly one big traffic jam. But remains of the old Greek settlement, founded 2,700 years ago, are still there, located on a picturesque little adjoining island. The piazza on the island is one of the most beautiful in Italy and has a Christian cathedral, which still shows stonework dating from the city’s fourth century B.C. pagan roots. A little nip and tuck, and stoneworkers turned the Temple of Athena into a major Catholic cathedral.

The Opel gave us the freedom to explore out-of-the way villages in the interior of Sicily. We explored a Roman villa, built by a rich person in fourth century B.C. and then covered by a mudslide until rediscovered in the 1950s. We saw a village that had been built entirely of black lava in the second century. We waded in an icy river that ran through a gorge so high that sunlight never reached the water.

Romance and charm were everywhere. Some villages were hanging on mountain cliffs and didn’t have sidewalks — just steps. And everywhere the narrow streets led to small piazzas with ice-cream and espresso shops.

The Greek theater in Taormina is the second-largest ancient theater in Sicily. (Joe Richardson/Special to the American Press)

And vaulted ceilings? They were so abundant, they were almost commonplace. But I still want one.

“I’ll have to study them more carefully,” I told Joe. “Where? Back in Italy?” he asked cautiously.

Ahh … he’s paying attention.

*This story first appeared in the American Press on September 21, 2003

In Catania, located halfway down the eastern coast of Sicily, one can turn any corner and find something wonderful like this big Baroque fountain. (Joe Richardson/Special to the American Press)