The true heart of Italy

We could, if we want, have freshly shucked oysters for breakfast - they come with a free glass of white wine. Or we could join the disorderly scrum at Caseificio Borderi, a deli at the end of the Ortigia's Old Market, for what is reputed to be Sicily's best panini. But having already committed the sin of fuelling up on cannoli and espresso, we are reduced to feasting with our eyes only.

We amble past stalls selling prickly pear fruit and pine nuts, tubs of oil-slicked olives and pyramids of ruby tomatoes, the vendors entreating us to try their wares.

"Prova, prova... dai," they call, holding out little almond biscotti, Bronte pistachios and fresh dates.

Every trope and Italian stereotype, every postcard street scene is played out here in Sicily, albeit bigger and louder, saturated with colour and high emotion; the sky is bluer, the architecture more ornate, the flavours bolder, the arguments more fierce and the laughter more raucous.

The island's 25,000 square kilometres, (around a third of the size of Tasmania) is rich with both nature-blessed and man-made treasure; a diverse topography of beaches, snow-tipped volcanoes and islands, forests, vineyards and dusty dun-coloured plains where nothing but cacti grow.

Despite horror stories about driving in Sicily, we spend a too-short 10 days crisscrossing the island without incident. Inexplicably, our car hire costs us around $11 a day and we keep waiting for the sting, but it never comes. It's off-season and apart from a handful of hotspots, we rarely meet other tourists. We take the roads less travelled, visiting spectacular ruins and ancient temples, museums and wineries, navigating our zippy little Fiat Cinquecento around hairpin coastal bends.

On the lagoon between Trapani and Marsala, famous for its sweet wine, the salt workers have packed up for the season. Above the shimmering salt pans, fringed by waist-high drifts of sea salt, are windmills, dating from mediaeval times; they are still now, until the sirocco blows in again from Africa in June. Inside one of the mills, we watch a video of the men doing this backbreaking work; their tools, wheelbarrows, hands and shovels; their skins polished by sun and wind to burnished leather.

Stopping to explore the imposing archaeological site of Selinunte, among just a handful of tourists doing so, we then turn north. It's olive season and as we drive through the island's centre, we stop to stretch our legs and chat to an elderly couple in an olive grove - the wife holding a basket while her husband climbs a wooden ladder to pick the fruit.

The sat nav leads us through forest and up a mountain to a magnificent ruin - a cathedral on a plateau, its tumbled walls lichen-covered, birds wheeling in the sky above its crumbled ceiling. I call the accommodation owner Giulio and tell him we are lost.

"No, no, is correct. Turn and see the iron gates? Just drive through," he says. An earthquake destroyed the cathedral in 1968, but the abbey behind it, originally established by hermit monks in the 14th century and bought from the government by Giulio Inglese's family in 1866 after the monks were evicted, survived and is slowly being restored.

Giulio gives us a tour of L'abbazia Santa Maria del Bosco, showing us frescoed walls, carved lintels and vaulted ceilings. There are long, dimly-lit corridors hung with red velvet, paved with the original flagstones, cloisters with courtyards of rose gardens, a grotto with a natural spring that was used to keep food fresh before refrigeration, chapels, a musty wine cellar and a living area filled with the hunting trophies of Giulio's great-uncle. The sole guests, we stay in one of the former monk's rooms, the wall decorated with a coat of arms of the Aragonese royal family.

We are also the only guests at our tiny hotel in Ragusa Ibla overlooking the duomo of the Basilica of San Giorgio. The hilltop town is a breathtaking Baroque fantasy, one of the nine "Val di Nota" towns in the region, rebuilt in late-Baroque style after an earthquake in 1693. Ragusa is also famous for being a frequent film location for the much-loved, long-running Italian television series, Inspector Montalbano, and we eat spaghetti with roasted tomatoes at "the Inspector's" favourite restaurant A Rusticano, where stars, including Greta Scacci have signed the wall.

Conquering Greeks, Normans, Arabs, Phoenicians and Romans, among others, have left their mark on Sicily's cities. The whole of Siracusa on the east coast is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Our hotel in its ancient centre, Ortigia, a small island connected by a bridge to the city, overlooks the main piazza (surely among the most beautiful in Italy) bordered by colonnaded churches and Baroque 16th-century palazzi. The duomo, built in the 7th century, is one of Europe's oldest churches, but inside it are the remains of a far older place of worship - the time-worn fluted columns of the 5th-century BC Temple of Athena.

Siracusa's also home to the central Archaeological Park Neapolis, with its magnificent Roman amphitheatre, Greek theatre and the Orecchio di Dionisio, "the ear of Dionysius", an ear-shaped limestone cave that has incredible acoustic properties, amplifying the quietest whisper. According to myth, the tyrant Dionysius I, who ruled Syracuse from 432 to 367 BC, would imprison his enemies in the cave, eavesdropping to confirm their treachery from the opening at the top.

Ortigia is also a wonderful place for just wandering after a day's sightseeing, whether along the harbourfront with a gelato, across the piazza, its beautiful architecture atmospherically spotlit at night, or exploring the artisan shops, bars and restaurants in the maze of tiny streets surrounding it.

Sicily's east coast landscape is dominated by Mt Etna, which the Sicilians call "mungibeddu" - beautiful mountain. One morning we drive up the southern slope, then take the cable car from Rifugio Sapienza to the summit, surprised to see people below us walking up along paths that wind across the blackened, alien-looking earth. It's breathtakingly cold up here, and while I appreciate the eerie beauty and, when the billowing clouds momentarily part, the views of the sea and Aeolian islands, I can't help but feel a bit spooked. One of the world's most active volcanoes, Etna has been quiet during our time in Sicily, but as we drive down the other side of its slope, it's sobering to pass houses, only their tiled roofs visible, and an entire hotel, subsumed by lava.

The Siciliani can thank their invaders for their cuisine, which draws influence from Greek and Arabic cultures, along with a natural bounty from earth and sea. There are not enough meals in the day to try everything we'd like to, but we eat sweet red prawns at a remote beachside seafood shack and a contemporary degustation at an elegant Michelin-starred restaurant.

We breakfast on coffee granita in a brioche, lunch until dusk on local food expertly cooked by the farmer of an organic agriturismo, and snack on icing-sugar-dusted sweets in the hilltop town of Erice. We eat couscous and cannoli, spada (swordfish) and tuna, and Trapanese pesto made from sun-dried tomatoes, and taste wines that are redolent of Etna's volcanic earth.

One of the many writers bewitched by Sicily over the centuries, the German poet Goethe wrote: "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything."

Indeed, while Sicily might be a geographical outlier of Italy, it feels like its true heart.

Getting there: There are frequent flight connections to Palermo, Catania and Trapani in Sicily from major European cities.

When to go: April to June or September to November. Avoid high season, July-August.

Staying there: There are plenty of good hotels in Sicily, especially in the more touristed areas like Taormina or Cefal, but for something different, try accommodation in traditional Baglia (walled farmhouses with interior courtyards) such as Baglia Donna Franca winery near Marsala (from 95 euro ($146) per night); agriturismi such as La Manna di Zabbra, an organic farm inland from Cefalu (and make sure to book lunch - 30 euro including house wine); or the spectacular abbey, L'abbazia Santa Maria del Bosco with rooms from $220 per night. Also recommended is B&B Il Duomo in Siracusa (doubles from 65 euro) and the tiny but perfectly situated Il Duomo Relais in Ragusa (doubles from 99 euro). donnafranca.it; lamannadizabbra.com; abbaziasantamariadelbosco.it; bbilduomosiracusa.it; ilduomorelais.it

Eat and drink: Traditional Sicilian foods not to miss: cannoli, arancini, panelle (fried chickpea fritters in bread), pasta con le sarde (pasta with sardines, fennel, pine nuts and sultanas), pasta with sea urchin and pasta alla Norma with eggplant and salted ricotta. Spade (swordfish), tuna, red prawns, black pork from Nebrodi, chocolate from Modica, the cocoa ground with stones from Mt Etna, frutta di martorana (lifelike marzipan fruit). Wines include Nero d'Avola (red), Nerello Mascalese (red) and Carricante (white) from Etna and the fortified wines from Marsala.