Twenty minutes by ferry, or three hours by plane

Sicily is separated from the mainland by three kilometres of water, and that makes it far closer than Sardinia and far further than it looks: to reach the ferry at Villa San Giovanni from Bologna is nine hundred kilometres. Anyone coming by motorhome should reckon on two days of travel.

By ferry

The crossing of the Strait, from Villa San Giovanni to Messina, takes twenty minutes and needs no booking: you turn up, buy a ticket and drive on. Sailings run continuously, day and night. The alternative is the long crossings: Naples to Palermo and Catania, Salerno to Palermo and Messina, Genoa and Livorno to Palermo.

For anyone with a tall vehicle the overnight ship from Naples to Palermo, ten hours, saves the whole drive down Calabria; it costs more than the Strait ferry but removes a day at the wheel.

By plane

The main airports are Palermo and Catania, both with plenty of domestic and European flights; then there are Trapani Birgi and Comiso, smaller and handy for the west and the Ragusa area respectively. Car hire is easy to find, but in July and August it is worth booking well ahead.

On the island

There are three motorways: the A20 along the Tyrrhenian coast between Messina and Palermo, the A18 along the Ionian between Messina and Syracuse, and the A19 cutting across the interior from Palermo to Catania. The rest are trunk roads, some good and some not. Journey times need calculating generously, above all inland and in the south-east.