New Year's Eve Catania

Catania is one of the liveliest centres of the east coast: if you are in Sicily for the New Year day, without a doubt Catania is the most suited city for the celebrations! The panorama around Catania is just breathtaking: in fact, the town is located on a beautiful bay, the Gulf of Catania precisely, in a flat area dominated by the Etna.
As all the Sicily cities, Catania has very ancient origins: founded by the preitalic Sicilian population, it was then a Greek colony, but it became very important under the Romans domain.
After that Catania was conquered by the Ostrogoths, and then went under the Arabs and Normans domain, followed by the Swabians, the Angevins and the Aragonese one.
In 1860, Catania was set free by the Spanish (Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), by Garibaldi and the Thousand.
Today Catania is a very pretty town, that aims its whole economy around the tourism industry: we remember that in 2002 in Catania was included in the UNESCO list as a heritage of humanity.
We start our visit of the city from the St. Agata Cathedral, a wonderful building in Baroque style, dedicated to the saint patron of Catania, of which it retains the relics.
There are many Baroque monuments in Catania, and most of them are around Dei Crociferi Street, one of the main roads of the city: all the Baroque buildings were built after an earthquake that destroyed most of Catania in 1693, and therefore all date back to the XVIIIth century.
Other Baroque buildings are the St. Benedetto church, near the homonym monastery; and among the most important civil buildings we have the Elephants Palace, the town hall headquarter, the Biscari Palace and the Tuscan Palace.
Many are also the old monuments, such as the Roman Theatre, the Amphithetare and the Thermal baths, of the Roman era.
Among the Museums we recommend the Catania Civic Museum, housed within the Ursino Castle, built by the wishes of Federico II.
Finally, in the Duomo square we can admire the Catania coat of arms, called U Liotru: this is a stone manufactured product, very old, which depicts an elephant that sustains an Egyptian obelisk.