Cefalù has three things that individually would make a great town: a Norman-Arab cathedral (1131, the gold mosaic Christ Pantocrator in the apse rivals Palermo's Monreale — some scholars say it's better, because it's earlier and more intimate), a 270m rock fortress (La Rocca — 20-minute hike, Saracen-era walls at the top, the view from the summit covers the entire north Sicilian coast), and a crescent beach that sits directly in front of the medieval old town, golden sand with the cathedral and rock as backdrop — the single most photogenic beach setting in Sicily. The combination of all three in a town of 14,000 people, 1 hour from Palermo by train (€7), is unreasonable. Cinema Paradiso was filmed here. That tells you everything about how the town looks.
Plan my Cefalù trip →Follow the stairs down from Corso Ruggero and you reach the Lavatoio Medievale — a public wash house where water flows from stone lion mouths into a series of basins. Women washed clothes here until the 1960s. The water is cold, clear, and still flowing from a river that runs beneath the town. Free. Atmospheric. The kind of place that made you feel like time collapsed.