For reasons beyond my control, I will be starting my nine day visit to Sicily on Easter weekend. Despite fears of tourist hordes, I want to use this as an opportunity! Can you tell me where to go in Sicily for a memorable Easter experience?

I've already done a lot of research and probably will fly directly in and out of Palermo and Catania (makes no difference to me which is which). So I have a lot of flexibility in where to begin our odyssey.

Grazie!!

Acireale near Catania is famous for their Easter processions:

..I did some more searching at it seems that the town is more famous for their Carnival celebrations, but they do have Easter festivities as well.

Well, Lonely Planet writes of "extraordinary pagan rituals" in Enna, but this seems to mean a procession with people wearing hoods, and they're not specific as to which day of Holy Week.

Which day do you arrive? I would probably plan to be in Trapani (I liked Trapani a lot more than I expected, and it's an easy bus ride from Palermo). There is a big "Procession of the Misteri" - I saw the floats in the church where they're kept the rest of the year. I think this site - www.processionemisteritp.it/it.htm - says it happens on Friday night, but I don't speak Italian. And if you go to Trapani, don't miss wonderful Erice.

I still haven't sorted out my photos from my spring trip, but if you go here - kwilhelm.smugmug.com/Travel/519560 - select Trapani and use the password "trapani" you can see my photos from there. The pix of the floats for the procession are at the end. (For the Erice photos the password is "erice".) Totally unedited, I'm afraid.

Noto has a procession at Easter.

Thanks! Great pictures, interesting thoughts. . . You raise a good point that the processions seem to happen on the Friday before Easter. We will probably be just settling in on Friday afternoon. Maybe Easter Sunday itself is more of a family day, with less fanfare?