The first time I walked the Camino Inglés, I confess that I didn’t particularly care for it. Truth be told, I was bored by it. These are not the kinds of thoughts you want to admit when you are the author of a guidebook on a particular route!
But context, as always, is everything. And on that particular occasion, I had already walked the Camino del Norte and also the Camino del Mar, working my way through an extended scouting trip. This also meant that I had probably covered five hundred kilometers of walking in Galicia. As beautiful as Galicia is, there’s a saturation point when it comes to following footpaths through eucalyptus forests. The first day, you snap a hundred photos, marveling at the mysterious hush, the towering trees, the perfect trail and the occasional stone bridges over streams. The second day, you still click fifty pics. By day four or five, though, as pleasant as the walking remains, the mind wanders. No matter how pretty the view, by the hundredth glimpse it’s easy to take the whole scene for granted.
As I cruise through the eleventh week of walking, I’m mindful of that saturation point, of that tendency to disregard familiar beauty. After all, this may have been the nicest day of walking in Sicily thus far. I made a steep climb out of Militello in near-complete darkness, and then, as the sun broke the eastern horizon and the pavement failed, a faint glow illuminated the trail ahead of me. A long, gradual descent followed, winding through orange and olive groves, and over the persistent beige soil. As I move south, the Sicilians are warming to me, and one farmer halted in his car to ask me why on earth I was up so early. After some laughs, he invited me to eat some oranges, if I could find any ripe ones, and then he puttered along.
The challenge, though, is that I’ve now walked through a lot of oranges and olives. It’s a full-circle moment, really, as it feels like Puglia in February, complete with the cooler temperatures and limited daylight. The difference is that Puglia had spectacular highlights mixed in–the dramatic canyons and the intriguing cave churches–while Sicily, to this point, has mostly offered a consistent, subtler beauty.
The lone change of note over the past 24 hours has been a transformation among the towns along the way, as they have suddenly become–in my view, at least–much more interesting. After Militello, which I found utterly charming, the lone stop today came in Grammichele, which gave me flashbacks to Palmanova in Northeast Italy. While it lacked the exterior star fort, it still had a distinct star shape, radiating outward from a hexagonal piazza in the center. Beauty sometimes flows from tragedy, and such was the case here, as a devastating earthquake in 1693 flattened some of the surrounding communities. In response, Grammichele was founded by Prince Carlo Maria Carafa Branciforte in one of his fiefdoms, inspired by some of the latest thinking in urban planning.
Even more striking, though, was my day’s destination, Caltagirone, a hill town that has grown too big for its britches, and is spilling outward on all sides. The entire historic center has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and rightly so. There’s a distinct Baroque feel and a standard of upkeep and care that stands out in the region. Impressively, the defining site, the one featured in most of the promotional materials, is a staircase. One would think it would be difficult to pull in the tourists with the promise of stairs, but there you go. Originally intended to serve a practical purpose, connecting old Caltagirone with the “new” settlement in 1606, the Staircase of Santa Maria del Monte and its 142 (rather large) steps spanning 130 meters rises abruptly from just above the duomo. The front of each step is lined with ceramic tiles, all produced locally.
And that’s the second dominant feature of Caltagirone–its ceramic industry. There’s a long tradition of ceramics here, dating to the ancient world, though the arrival of Arab settlers in the 9th century added an extra stylistic element. The heavy clay content in the region, combined with–at the time–thick forests providing ample firewood for the kilns, made the town a particularly well-equipped spot for such artisanal work. The industry suffered repeated blows that easily could have proven fatal. First, those brutal earthquakes shattered many of the great medieval works, wiping out the lion’s share of Caltagirone’s rich ceramic history. Then, the rise of cement in the 19th century, along with industrial production, threatened every traditional artisan’s labor. One man, though, Don Luigi Sturzo, held back the tide with the founding of the School of Ceramics, which preserved the old practices, and embedded them in the local culture for generations to come. Today, the historic center is lined with ceramics shops, and the most striking form of the craft is the Moor’s Head, or ceramic vases formed in the shape of human heads.
That name, of course, is based upon a popular legend, involving an Arab soldier and a Sicilian girl, dating to around the year 1000. The soldier noticed the girl, beautiful, standing on a balcony in Palermo, and immediately fell in love. How could the girl deny this? Before long, they were immersed in a passionate affair, “affair” being the operative word, as it turned out that the soldier had a wife and children back home. The girl, however, couldn’t let him go–she couldn’t imagine a life without his beautiful face present in it. But she was clever, and so she arrived at a savvy solution. She decapitated him, and then turned his head into a planter. She grew basil in it. And for whatever reason, this proved to be a popular decoration–the start of a trend.
One can’t bring up decapitated Arabs without thinking of Santiago, Saint James, who in his Matamoros manifestation is often portrayed astride a horse, sword raised high, and foes trampled underfoot. There’s a connection here as well to the great staircase in Caltagirone. Each year, on July 24 and 25, ever since the 18th century, the stairs are decorated with the figure of the town’s beloved patron saint–that very same Santiago, or in Sicilian, Sagnacupu. Four thousand lanterns are positioned all along the steps, while electrical lights are extinguished in the center, creating the appearance of a river of fire coursing downhill. It’s a moment of high drama, orchestrated in absolute silence, as the master organizer directs the positioning of each and every lantern, while scores of boys and young men wait in anticipation for the signal to ignite the eruption.
Santiago’s relationship with the town is nearly a thousand years old, dating to 1090 when Count Roger ordered a church built in James’s honor following a victory over Saracen forces. The timing is striking, as this just precedes both the first Crusade and the rise of Diego Gelmírez as first bishop and then archbishop in Compostela, which marked its elevation into one of the foremost pilgrimage shrines in the Catholic world. Already, though, Santiago’s reputation as a key figure in the ongoing pushback against Arab rule was growing in importance, and Roger had made a pilgrimage of his own to Monte Sant’Angelo in honor of Saint Michael.
And Santiago’s presence in Caltagirone continues to evolve today. In the center of town stands a sign, the colors the familiar yellow and blue, announcing the Cammino di San Giacomo Caltagirone. Don’t worry about the fact that you didn’t know about this. It’s brand new–like, so new that the shrink wrap hasn’t been removed yet. A welcome center in the Fercolo Museum is being established; a guide will be published on January 11, 2026, on the anniversary of James becoming patron saint of Caltagirone. The route is 129 kilometers and links Caltagirone with Capizzi, the site of the annual Feast of Miracles of Saint James and the oldest pilgrimage site in Sicily. It is believed that relics of Santiago were once preserved there, in the Sanctuary of Saint James, until they were stripped under the orders of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1435. Is there any historical justification for this narrative? Not really! But when has that ever stopped a pilgrimage?
Some days are just kind of boring. No way around it. Other days, though, just a little work is required to peel back the layers, to find the great treats lurking deeper. And that was surely the case in Caltagirone.
