The islands off Sicily's coast operate by different rules. There are no cars on Stromboli — the streets are too narrow and the volcano too active to make them practical. Pantelleria sits closer to Tunisia than to Sicily and looks like it — black volcanic rock, dammusi houses built into the hillside, natural hot springs bubbling up at the water's edge. Favignana, largest of the Egadi Islands, has water so clear it looks edited.

The Aeolian Islands are the most visited — seven volcanic islands north of Messina, each with its own character. Lipari is the largest and most convenient. Salina is the most beautiful, with two extinct volcanoes, capers growing on the slopes, and the Malvasia wine that the island has been producing since the Greeks. Stromboli is the one that erupts — regularly, reliably, spectacularly — and can be climbed at night with a guide to watch the lava from the crater edge.

These islands are not for the traveller who needs convenience. The ferries run on Italian time. The accommodation ranges from exceptional to rudimentary with little in between. The reward is complete removal from the world — no traffic, no crowds in any meaningful sense, and the particular silence of somewhere that the modern world has not yet finished arriving at.