La Casa di Melo, where we stayed for two nights, was one of several highlights of our Sicilian holiday, along with our visits to Mount Etna, and The Godfather excursions to medieval mountain villages.
It is a beautifully renovated family-owned farm house which year round welcomes guests as a bio-hotel, run with great charm by its current owners, a youthful married couple called Lorenzo and Chiara.
The hotel retains a distinctive traditional air, with antique furniture from Chiara’s original family home, dispersed liberally along corridors and rooms, and a wine cellar containing a selection of the island’s best organic whites and reds. My personal favourites drawn from vineyards stretching from nearby Syracuse to the slopes of Mount Etna were ruby reds that developed exquisite flavour and perfume after a decent time to breathe: The 2011 Nero Ibleo and the aptly named Hallelujah, a Syrah from 2015.
The building has been thoughtfully upgraded with designer rustic bathrooms, terracotta floors, and firm beds, with walls painted in dark pipe grey ,and ceilings reinforced with newly crafted wood beams . Each room is named after a citrus fruit, or vegetable, its sign prettily set in colourful ceramic.
This rural idyll has a Latin American hacienda feel about it. On warm days, and there are many in this part of Italy, breakfast and supper is served in candlelight out on an extensive veranda, shaded by tumbling bougainvillea and jasmine. From there the view takes in an infinity pool, a line of tall palms, lush cultivated fields, and the crouching tiger on the horizon which is Monti Ibiel, the region’s mountain range.
As Lorenzo explained, opening the hotel in 2009 brought a new lease of life to a family estate that had been struggling to survive the challenges of making farming profitable. The inspiration lay in making the deliberate choice to fully embrace the organic market as a new opportunity for the produce that grows naturally in the rich local soil-most notably deliciously sweet blood oranges and huge juicy lemons.
Guests are encouraged to walk freely around the extensive groves of organic citris fruit the farm exports to northern Europe, a particular treat in early Spring when the air is scented with blossom and filled with the chorus of migrating birds, among them swallows sweeping through, and doing their bit to keep the insect population under control.
They can also savour a wonderful breakfast and evening buffet lovingly prepared with all the organic vegetables and cheeses that the local land can produce.
This a worthwhile Sicilian venture that I strongly recommend. In its genuine conversion to the organic cause, La Casa di Melo is a defiant and necessary counterpoint to the pollutants of the region’s monstrous petrochemical plant built in the 1960’s – nearer t Catania airport but thankfully nowhere in sight or smell when one stays in the farmhouse.
Surrounded by lush countryside, off the beaten-track, this bio-hotel is perfectly located for an extended chill-out and no less worthwhile local tourism. We drove to the magnificent island town of Ortiga, with its ancient Greek ruins, baroque piazzas , narrow medieval side streets, and lively food market surrounded by crystalline waters.
After the big earthquake of the late 17th century, much of the Greek stone was used in new buildings, while many of the small Jewish and Arab houses miraculously stod their ground, so that the town retains a distinctly Middle Eastern air about it, with touches of Athens and Lisbon.
Meanwhile those interested in the Second World War will need no reminding that it was here In this region of Sicily, that the Italians surrendered and the Germans began their retreat from Southern Europe in the Spring of 1943. .
The respectfully kept cemetery for over 1000 English and other Commonwealth soldiers is just outside Syracuse near to where the final battle for the liberation of Sicily was fought. Its neat lines of tombstones showing how young where many of those who died after surviving the Desert War are deeply moving .
Also worth a visit in Ortygia, are the catacomb-like caves turned underground air-raid shelters during WW2. Today the network of corridors carved deep into the stone, is an alternative tourist passage from one side of the island to the other, but also stands as an enduring reminder of human resilience and survival.
