Rich bounty of Sicily's treasure island

Ortigia clings to mainland Sicily like a child gripping on to a mother's apron strings. But the tiny island, and historical centre of Siracusa, is the star of the show in the south-east corner of Sicily where - between you, me and the violin case - visitors feel free to mention the word "mafia". Well, behind their hands, anyway.

It takes less than 50 minutes at a leisurely gait to circumnavigate Ortigia along a raised footpath, at times 30m above the dazzlingly clear water of the Ionian Sea, where you'll often see locals diving for sea urchins or tourists and some locals sprawled on towels on pebble beaches, worshipping the sun.

It's a visually rewarding walk, with sandstone-coloured buildings in various states of disrepair or renovation, flanking narrow laneways and streets which snake towards the centre of Ortigia, and something quite special.

Three short, well-used bridges connect mainland Siracusa to Ortigia, like arteries to the region's tourist heart, with thousands of visitors a week enjoying the history and culture of the town which once belonged to ancient Greece and rivalled Athens as its biggest city.

The bridges span a narrow neck of water linking a marina, with everything from wooden fishing boats to stylish yachts, to a small port where a huge workboat is often moored alongside an opulent German-made luxury launch which rents for $1 million a week.

As recent retirees, my wife Leonie and I are more than happy with our three-bedroom apartment in an old condominium on the Siracusa side of the channel - more blue-collar than the blue rinse you find among the tourists in the flashier hotels on the island - which we rent for $1850 for a month.

It is the perfect location, because while the bridges are only 100m away we become friendly with some of the small cafe owners who are happy to listen to our broken Italian as we attempt to order a cappuccino and the favourite local pastries, cannoli - tube-shaped shells of fried or baked pastry dough, which hold hostage some fabulous sweet ricotta.

And while we joke - but not too loudly - about the involvement of the mafia (Cosa Nostra) in Sicily, not once do we observe any behaviour which puts us on edge.

Quite the contrary. The area fizzes with life, much like the recent eruptions on nearby Mt Etna which come perilously close to disrupting our flight back to our Italian base in the Aosta Valley.

The stay in Siracusa, also known as Syracuse, offers one of those holidays where you can frantically go here, there and everywhere, or sit back and let your thoughts run free. We have the best of both worlds, taking day trips to the incredibly beautiful baroque towns of Modica, Ragusa and Noto, which can be reached by bus along stretches of road often lined with oleander and overgrown bougainvillea.

Surprisingly, the autostrata stops suddenly at Rosolini. The toll booths, overgrown with weeds, have never collected a euro in anger. Work stopped years ago after a dispute between local government authorities, project heads and (allegedly, supposedly, and you didn't hear it from me) mafia connections. (Ray Wilson, by the way, is a pseudonym.)

We also take a train ride to Taormina, north of Catania, which is eye candy for the tourist, settled high on a crest, with an old amphitheatre which has Mt Etna as its backdrop. It's a town choc- full of tourists but on looks alone it could be crowned Miss Italy.

Mt Etna, which becomes cranky just before we fly north, is mandatory viewing for holidaymakers in the area.

Our guide Dario leads us up a very challenging track before we reach the Valle del Bove (a valley of lava), which resembles the perfectly sinister backdrop for an Armageddon movie.

For many Italian towns, certain history pages are dog-eared for various reasons and Siracusa, over its 2700 years of existence, is no exception.

Its trump card is Archimedes, the greatest mathematician in antiquities, born and bred here.

His life was fatally interrupted in 212BC by a Roman soldier's spear, and his driving ambition at one stage in his life was to determine how many grains of sand it would take to fill the universe. History doesn't record what he did for the remainder of that day.

On a quiet day, as you cross one of the bridges, you may well hear the ghost of Archimedes shout "eureka!" (ancient Greek for "I have found it") - the word supposedly uttered by the great man as he ran naked through the streets, having leapt from his bathtub after determining that the volume of water he displaced in the bath must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged.

But it is unlikely that even Archimedes' ghost could be heard above the hoo-ha of a crazy game of canoe polo played in the water between two of the bridges on some Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

As old fishing boats chug by near the rock wall, five-a-side teams play an entertaining hybrid of water polo, canoeing, fencing and lacrosse, spiced with a splash of Italian passion.

Essentially, players - who seem to derive no end of joy from ramming the opposition with the front of their canoes - can use their hands or paddles to control the ball, with the ultimate aim of getting it into the nets secured to the sides of the bridges.

The yahooing from the players can be heard at the nearby ruins of the temple of Apollo (dating from the 6th century BC) and the daily markets which - aside from fish, fruit and veg, prosciutto, cheese and almost anything else you might need to keep the larder stocked for a few days - has two stores which sell the most heavenly cheap lunches.

About $20 gets you a platter for two of local cheeses, prosciutto crudo (uncooked, dry-cured ham), prosciutto cotto (cooked ham), dried and pickled fruits and vegetables, olives, bread and, of course, a glass of local wine. Or you can buy a monster roll for much less.

We enjoy our food at the markets but also from the many restaurants, especially Amuni, opposite our apartment, which prides itself on offering typical Sicilian food. Seafood is a mainstay, especially the flesh of sea urchins (ricci di mare), prepared either by itself with pasta or in a seafood marinara mix.

Mario, our landlord, acquaints us with the local arancini (thought to have been introduced to Sicily in the 10th century) - fried rice balls laced with mozzarella cheese which can incorporate meat, peas or whatever takes your fancy.

His local favourite, though, is granita, a semi-frozen dessert (though mainly eaten in the morning). Coarser than a sorbet, it can be flavoured with anything from lemon to almond or coffee and is almost always served with brioche.

We indulge in our favourite tipple - a spritz, an aperitif of prosecco, Aperol, sparkling mineral water, ice and a slice of orange, supposedly invented in Venice at the time of Austrian rule - at tables and chairs beneath umbrellas at the various cafes around the edges of the fabulous Piazza Duomo, surrounded by smaller laneways from which people spill into Ortigia's sea of life.

The duomo, competing for attention against ancient palaces and other church fronts, was once the Greek temple of Athena with a giant gold statue of the goddess on its roof, and the huge Doric columns are still evident. The wall above them, with battlements, is from the Norman period, while the fancy baroque facade was a replacement after a 1693 earthquake.

Mafia maybe, magnificent certainly.