An insider's guide to the best shopping in Sicily, including where to find high street shops, crafts and antiques. By Lee Marshall, Telegraph Travel's Sicily expert.
The big cities have all the usual Euro-zone chain stores such as Zara and H&M, but if you’ve come all this way it’s worth exploring Sicilian crafts, or taking back some of the gastronomic specialities that you will rarely find back home.
A good one-stop shop for crafts and antiques is the market held on the second weekend of each month at Mascalucìa on the southern skirts of Etna, between Catania and Nicolosi. Traditional craft specialities include the brightly decorated botanical-motif ceramics of Caltagirone and the wooden puppets or pupi of Palermo and Syracuse. For the latter, try the Bottega del Puparo (00 39 0931 465 540; pupari.com) at Via della Giudecca 19.
In Palermo, take home some local organic produce (chickpeas, sun-dried tomatoes, wine) and support a good cause by shopping at the Bottega dei Sapori (00 39 091 322 023; liberaterra.it) at Piazza Castelnuovo 13. It’s part of Libera Terra, an association that farms land confiscated from the Mafia.
South of Etna, two destination cake shops are worth making time for: Russo in Santa Venerina (between Taormina and Catania) does delicious almond or pistacchio biscuits and an exquisite cotognata (quince jelly); Caffè Sicilia in Noto (Corso Vittorio Emanuele 125; 00 39 0931 835 013) turns out canonical versions of the those two sweet Sicilian classics, cannolo (a fried pastry tube filled with sweet ricotta and candied fruit) and cassata (a ricotta, chocolate, candied fruit and marzipan calorie-bomb), as well as recherché treats such as almond paste or mulberry sorbet.
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