Food, scenery and culture - this Italian road trip ticks all the boxes

I see dead people. Lots of them.

They hang from the walls close enough to touch, the rich dressed in their finest, the humble in cloth sacks and frayed slippers. Some stare back through eyeless sockets, small tufts of hair clinging to their grinning skulls. Others lie curled on shelves, hands clasped across sunken chests as if embarrassed by their exposed ribs.

I want to look away but I can't. Was that a leathery arm that just twitched? And look, over there. Two mummified children in frilly dresses, sharing a rocking chair while locked in an eternal embrace.

Goosebumps sprout on my arms. My mouth is dry. It's true what they say. You never feel more alive than when you're surrounded by death.

Welcome to one of the world's most macabre museums, the catacombs of Palermo in Sicily. The Capuchins, an order of Franciscan friars, excavated crypts below their monastery in the 16th century once their cemetery had filled and began mummifying their recently deceased brothers.

As the years passed rich locals lobbied for an opportunity at immortality. More than 400 years later there are close to 10,000 corpses - priests, politicians, children and virgins - lining these walls.

There's no more fitting place than the catacombs to begin a week-long tour of this hot, beautiful and chaotic island of almost 5 million people. Sicily, after all, has been dealing with the dead for more than 10,000 years, its fertile volcanic soil enriched by the blood and bones of endless invaders.

They all came here - the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Vandals, the Romans, the Normans and the Byzantine Empire. But Sicily, as it does with every visitor, absorbed them all.

Its hills are scattered with the ruins of long-faded empires, its cities adorned with gothic cathedrals and its food scented with African spices and fruits.

But be wary. Like those racks of mummified corpses, Sicily is not for the faint-hearted. So, amunninni. Let's go. And, as the locals are also fond of saying, cu nesci arrinesci. Who leaves their own comfort zone succeeds.

Why do skydivers and bungee-jumpers go to such death-defying lengths to obtain an adrenaline rush when driving a car around Sicily is so much simpler?

The result is the same - a racing heart, shallow breathing and dilated pupils. And that's just the pedestrians.

We had just completed three glorious days wandering the jumbled streets of Palermo and were nervous that our hire car's seat belts wouldn't be big enough to wrap around us.

We'd devoured arancini - fried rice balls stuffed with pork ragu and peas - for breakfast at the Mercato il Capo, one of the countless food markets in the capital.

We'd listened to the lusty baritone songs of fishmongers while munching on their octopus and whitebait.

We'd guzzled cups of granita limone, an addictive citrus ice drink, to keep the sweltering heat at bay. And, naturally, we'd slurped our way through towering plates of spaghetti smothered in pistachio pesto, sweet raisins and fresh prawns while managing to make room for cannoli - that ultimate Sicilian dessert of fried pastry shells filled with creamy ricotta.

So we pretended that we had compensated for the calories by wandering Palermo's endless streets.

Our first destination had been the No Mafia Memorial, an unassuming museum on Via Vittorio commemorating the island's ages-old battle with the infamous Italian underworld.

Until the early 1990s the mafia influenced many aspects of Sicilian life. But the 1992 assassination of two leading anti-crime investigators, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (the bomb that killed Falcone was registered by an earthquake sensor on the other side of the island) triggered a turning point in public sentiment.

Once spoken about only in careful whispers, the mafia is now treated with open hostility. On a hill near Palermo's airport sits a large and once-unthinkable "No Mafia" sign. The Memorial itself pulls no punches with graphic video and photographic displays detailing the power and staggering number of victims of the Cosa Nostra, or Black Hand.

There's no questioning the mafia's hold on the modern public's imagination; not far away tourists throng Palermo's opera house, the Teatro Massimo, where several crucial scenes in Francis Ford Coppola's acclaimed Godfather movies were filmed.

Footsore from three days of exploring 12th-century Norman palaces, gilded cathedrals and a coastline hemmed by turquoise waters and azure skies, we clambered into our car and nervously edged our way into the Palermo traffic. The first thing we noticed after adjusting to the left-hand drive was the absence of white lines on the roads, the reluctance of other drivers to indicate and their delight in overtaking with millimetres to spare.

But somehow the anarchy and mayhem - like so much of Italian life - works. The adrenaline surge from a couple of rich espressos certainly helped. After 30 minutes of swerving and zigzagging we left Palermo behind and began our journey into the true heart of Sicily.

Non c'e megghiu sarsa di la fami, goes an old Sicilian saying. Hunger is the best sauce. It was early afternoon and our stomachs were growling as the autostrada swept us through an endless series of parched brown hills and low-lying vineyards. But rather than grab a fresh panini with mortadella or prosciutto at a petrol station (Italian rest stops disdain rubbery hamburgers and plastic-wrapped sandwiches) we rolled the dice and left the highway for the town of Resuttano.

It's a golden rule of travel that authenticity can only be found by venturing off the beaten track. Ignoring the pleas of our GPS to turn back, we pulled into this 1000-year-old town of 1800 people and discovered da Salvo, a family-run trattoria.

Its hosts, Ignazia Pappalardo and her husband Salvo, welcomed us like long-lost family members. Within minutes our table was laden with sciachiatta, a warm Sicilian bread dough filled with meat and vegetable sauce. But as we rose to leave, a look of dismay crossed Ignazia's stricken face. No coffee and home-baked cannoli? There was no arguing with her. We sat back down and prepared our waistlines for another assault of sweetness.

Perhaps all that sugar and caffeine is the reason for Sicily's madcap traffic. But it certainly kept us alert as we reluctantly left Resuttano, passed through the industrial city of Catania and sped along a coastline fringed by groves of mandarins and lemons toward Sicily's south eastern corner and the historic city of Syracuse.

Founded by the ancient Greeks 2700 years ago, Syracuse is listed as a World Heritage Site for good reason. The legendary Roman statesman Marcus Cicero, not a man known for overstatement, described it as "the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all". It was here that Archimedes, one of history's greatest mathematicians, decoded nature's equations while inventing machines like screw pumps and pulleys still used today.

Syracuse's excellent bus tours allow visitors to get on and off throughout the day. Our key destination was the Latomia del Paradiso, a majestic limestone quarry that provided the stone to build Syracuse. Slaves - including 7000 survivors of a war between Syracuse and Athens in 400 BCE - carved enormous blocks out of the quarry's walls, leaving behind giant, echoing caverns. One of them was dubbed "Dionysius' ear" by the great Italian painter Caravaggio because of its unique acoustics. You can still find the imprints of scaffolding erected thousands of years earlier.

There's a nearby amphitheatre so large that more than 450 bulls could be sacrificed at one time. And the food in Syracuse? The Baroque island of Ortigia, which serves as the traditional centre of the city, is filled with busy food markets, spice stands redolent of Africa and a never-ending array of seafood, cheeses and nuts. Put aside a minimum of two days to explore this town. And add another notch in your belt to make room.

It was late afternoon and Mt Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes, was performing a decent impersonation of any food-loving tourist in Sicily after lunch - sitting immobile, casting a formidable shadow and quietly belching and burping. It does this a lot. During its most recent major eruption it expelled so much lava and ash its height increased by 30 metres.

We were on our way to the seaside tourist resort of Taormina. But there was no escaping Etna. It filled the horizon to our left like a giant old man relishing an after dinner cigar, plumes of black smoke shrouding the sun, streaking the sky in the same reds and oranges of the vineyards and orchards below.

Taormina is the ultimate postcard Italian town. Clinging to a rugged hill overlooking the Ionian Sea, it attracted pioneering gay tourists in the middle of the 19th century eager to escape the cold of northern Europe and the constant persecution of homosexuals.

These days it is famous because of the TV show The White Lotus, where many key scenes were filmed in the five-star resort of the San Domenico Palace, a former 14th century monastery. The Palace is no stranger to stardom. Elizabeth Taylor is said to have smashed a mandolin over the head of her then husband, Richard Burton, on the terrace of their suite during one of their frequent spats in the 1960s.

The main shopping and eating strip - the Corso Umberto - bulges with restaurants, coffee shops and high-end clothing retailers. The streets are so narrow they can fool your car's GPS. But a long day of walking will take you past a Saracen castle built by Arab invaders, a crumbling Norman castle and a theatre so ancient no-one is sure if the Romans or Greeks built it.

The following day we pushed toward Cefalu on the Tyrrhenian Coast. But first we made a detour inland to the picturesque hilltop village of Savoca to visit Bar Vitelli - an 18th-century palace that served as a cafe location in the original Godfather movie and now attracts movie aficionados from around the world. Meals are expensive but the view over the hills toward the sea is free and worth the journey.

An hour later we cruised into Cefalu, another medieval town of cobbled narrow streets favoured by generations of raiders. Bound for Palermo and our flight home the following day, we were determined to make the most of our last night. At yet another small trattoria the wine and pasta dishes kept coming, followed by more plates of cannoli and shots of limoncello.

Sadly, we couldn't finish it all. Sicily's charms had won us over. But like most invaders drawn to this island's shores throughout history, we knew the time had come to surrender.

Read more on Explore:

Getting there: The two most popular airports in Sicily are the largest, Catania-Fontanarossa, and Palermo's Falcone e Borsellino. The best time to visit to avoid the hottest months and peak prices are May to June and late September to November.

Getting around: If you're driving, parking in many large cities is limited and expensive and nervous or inexperienced drivers should consider trains or buses. The main train line in Sicily runs east from Palermo to Messina and then south via Catania to Syracuse. You can also ride to Naples, Rome and Florence without changing trains. But buses are a more reliable and inexpensive option and day and night services connect most cities. The larger coach companies include Segesta, Interbus and SAIS Autolinee.

Staying there: While Sicily is considered one of Italy's cheaper destinations, hotel prices can range from $200 a night to more than $1100 at the luxury end. Most cities offer a wide array of comfortable B&B options for as little as $150 a night.

Explore more: visitsicily.info; italia.it/en/sicily; palermocatacombs.com

The writer travelled at his own expense.

Pictures: Shutterstock; Garry Linnell