Isola Bella Nature Reserve
Detail
A nature reserve since 1998, Isola Bella is the small island that stretches for about a kilometre in front of the beach in Taormina (ME), accessible by the Taormina-Mazzarò cable car. Covered in lush vegetation and connected to the mainland by a thin strip of sand, Isola Bella is the natural paradise sung about by Goethe, Byron, Dillon and many other poets.
It was in 1806 when Ferdinand I of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies, donated the islet to the municipality of Taormina. In 1890, Isola Bella was bought by the English noblewoman Florence Trevelyan, who had been exiled to Sicily by Queen Victoria as the lover of her cousin, the future King Edward VII. It is to Lady Florence, a lover of botany and gardens, that we owe much of the floral and arboreal heritage present on the island today: tropical plants of great value and lush Mediterranean scrub surround the cottage of her “buen retiro”.
After the death of Lady Florence and her husband, Salvatore Cacciola, Isola Bella passed from hand to hand, alternating between moments of abandonment and vandalism and attempts at attention by public institutions, which acquired it in 1990 and assigned its management and protection to WWF and Ctgana, declaring it a Regional Naturalistic Museum.
Today, Isola Bella is one of the most fascinating places to visit along the coast. To find out more about visiting hours and modalities, consult the official Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park portal.
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