I have been on what is quite reasonably cited as the world’s most dangerous road, a crumbling track through the Bolivian jungle. On one side were furious, gushing waterfalls and on the other a sheer drop. Whenever we passed one of those little roadside shrines that marked where previous vehicles had slid over the edge, the bus driver removed his hands from the steering wheel to cross himself.

This, however, was not nearly so frightening as driving myself in a Fiat Punto to the southeastern tip of Sicily. Coming from the northern coast of Palermo and Cefalù, you are lulled into a false sense of security by motorways built with EU cash. These roads veer, tilt and stand high on their concrete stilts. Driving along them is like piloting a plane, and somewhere down below Sicily and its volcanic peaks flit past.

But then, around Piazza Armerina, you have to leave behind these spanking new dreams of modern transportation. Suddenly, towns appear over the horizon, stacked precariously on the craggy slopes. They are golden and seem to glow in the sun.

From the uneven silhouettes of these small hillside towns protrude baroque cupolas, soaring campaniles, ornate façades. This may be the country’s southernmost tip, it may be closer to Tunisia than most of its motherland, it may have been colonised and recolonised and repatriated and reunified more times than anyone can remember, but these skylines unfailingly remind you: this is Italy.

After the rigours of the journey, Modica is the perfect place for letting off steam. The town occupies a gorge and its main street, Corso Umberto, is constructed over a river bed. The buildings rear up on each side. This is a town not of streets but of staircases. Modica was once the region’s leading town.

Taken by the Spanish in the late 14th century, it was placed under the jurisdiction of the Cabrera family, who also had stakes in South America. There are remnants of this cultural cross-pollination in Modica today, and not only in the architecture (there is a flavour of Valparaiso in the ironwork balconies). On the north side of Corso Umberto, a shop sells chocolate made to an Aztec formula.

Conscious of my role as a journalist, I selflessly and conscientiously sample every flavour on offer. “Cioccolata degli Aztechi,” the packaging reads, alongside a baffling portrait of someone who looks like one of the Mitford sisters. The ingredients are the very essence of minimalism: cocoa beans and sugar.

The difference, the woman who runs the shop tells me, is all in the beans being cold-pressed. The result is a grainy, crumbly texture, surprisingly light after its modern-day equivalent, which is laden with oils and fats. The Modicans mix in different spices — vanilla, cinnamon and chilli pepper — which pack a punch in the aftertaste.

I spend several days in Modica, revelling in the perfect synthesis of delicious chocolate and a calorie-burning stair-climb to obtain it, before I decide that it’s time to tear myself away.

The drive from Modica to Noto takes me through orchards of carob trees and thickets of fruit-bearing cacti. The roads are mountainous and double — then triple — back on themselves. The farmers, crammed into tiny pick-ups, eat ice-cream as they drive.

The earth is dry and scorched. On the way, I manage to find the Cava d’Ispica, a labyrinthine network of Neolithic cave dwellings and catacombs. We go to look at one of the burial chambers — a dank, curving cave, pitted with boxy, coffin-shaped holes. There is something very careful in the way that they are tessellated, smaller child-sized ones fitted between the larger.

The entire southeastern region of Sicily was devastated by an earthquake in 1693, when most settlements were reduced to little more than dust. Different towns dealt with this in different ways. In Ragusa they built an entirely new town farther down the hill, but some stubborn aristocrats refused to abandon the rubble of their personal palazzi and decided to rebuild the old town from scratch. The result is a lovely place with a split personality.

The people of Noto, however, had a different idea. Only a week after the earthquake, the architect Giuseppe Lanza was commissioned to design an entire new town. He didn’t skimp on grandeur. Noto is constructed on a grid system in opulent baroque style. Mundane administrative buildings are fronted with wide columns and sweeping steps. The streets are laid with parallel lines of marble, which conspire with the decreasing heights of lintels to create optical illusions of vanishing points.

The most bizarre thing about Noto, and about the whole area, is its emptiness. I walked around its intersecting right-angled streets for hours and didn’t see another tourist. How, I wondered, can people resist this? Where is everyone? When I get to Syracuse the next day, I begin to understand. Syracuse, along with its adjoining island of Ortygia, is possibly the most beautiful city I have ever seen. You wander across the trapezoid-shaped main square, down a narrow alleyway, catching a glimpse of the restless sea through the buildings, past a rose-tinted church with matching cupola, and when you reach a tiny piazza with a lush, bubbling fountain inhabited by impossibly white ducks you just want to say: “Oh, come on.”

Tourists are drawn here like iron filings to a magnet. Ortygia is perfect. It’s hot, but not too hot, with the breeze coming off the sea. You can catch a boat across the bay to a beach or you can wander about the narrow streets. You can descend 20 yards (18m) into the ground to see a room carved out of rock in Byzantine times to form a Jewish ritual bath. You can cross to the mainland to climb the serried seats of an ancient Greek theatre in which 16,000 people once watched the first performances of plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus.

Go to Syracuse, by all means, but don’t be put off venturing further afield. You won’t be sorry. You just need to buy a road map first. And prepare to surrender yourself to luck and the kindness of strangers.

Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel is The Distance Between Us (Review, £7.99)

Need to know

Maggie O’Farrell travelled with the southern Italy specialist Long Travel (01694 722367, www.long-travel.co.uk), which offers deals such as a ten-night itinerary from £727 per person based on two sharing. This includes one week’s self-catering accommodation at I Fratelli near Resuttano, three nights’ B&B at the Grand Hotel Ortigia in Syracuse, flights with British Airways from Gatwick to Catania, and a hire car with air-conditioning.

Reading: Sicily (Lonely Planet, £12.99).

Details: Italian State Tourist Board (020-7408 1254, www.italiantouristboard.co.uk).


Sicily - your essential guide

From the winding streets of Syracuse to the grand squares of Palermo; from empty beaches to stunning mosaics at the Roman country estate at Piazza Armerina — Sicily has culture, countryside and beach to suit everyone.

And the island has become more accessible as new budget and scheduled flights have linked the UK to Palermo in the west and Catania in the east. There are smart villas for hire across the island, as well as specialist tour operators offering activity breaks and accommodation.

Flights: British Airways (0870 8509850, www.ba.com) flies from Gatwick to Catania, three times a week, while

Air Malta (0845 6073710, www.airmalta.com) flies direct from Gatwick to Catania. Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) has direct flights from Stansted to Palermo. There are also charter flights to Catania with Excel (0870 1690169, www.xl.com) and Thomas Cook (0870 7505711, www.thomascook.com). Alitalia (0870 5448259, www.alitalia.co.uk) flies from Heathrow to Palermo and Catania, via Rome.

From the mainland: Twin a trip to the mainland with a visit to Sicily, via ferry crossings between Palermo and Naples with SNAV (00 39 081 428 5555, www.snav.it). Ustica Lines (www.usticalines.it) operates a hydrofoil between Reggio Calabria and Messina in the north.

Tour operators: Long Travel (01694 722193, www.long-travel.co.uk), Think Sicily (020-7377 8518, www.thinksicily.co.uk), Citalia (0870 9097555, www.citalia.co.uk), Magic of Italy (0870 8880228, www.magicofitaly.co.uk), Holiday Options (0870 0130450, www.holidayoptions.co.uk), Italian Expressions (020-7433 2675, www.italianexpressions.co.uk).

Special interest holidays: try Arblaster & Clarke (01730 893344, www.winetours.co.uk) for wine tasting trips, Explore (0870 3334001, www.explore.co.uk) and ATG Oxford (01865 315678, www.atg-oxford.co.uk) for walking holidays, Andante Travels (01722 713800, www.andantetravels.co.uk) for historical tours, and Page & Moy (0870 8334012, www.pageandmoy.co.uk) for escorted trips on the island.

Further information: The Italian State Tourist Board has good links to a range of Sicily websites (www.enit.it); also useful are www.palermotourism.com, www.ilveliero-web.com and www.bestofsicily.com.

Reading: Sicily (Rough Guides, £11.99), Sicily (Lonely Planet, £12.99), In Sicily by Norman Lewis (Picador, £7.99).