Rock climbing in Sicily offers everything from big wall multi-pitch rock climbing to single pitch sports routes, with the added bonus of visiting an island steeped thousands of years of civilization and culture. The rock climbing here offers a great sense of adventure and there is a warmth and hospitality from the islands population that is always willing to help tourists and foreigners. The rock climbing on Sicily can be broken down into 3 main areas:

1 - Messina Area
In the northeast side of Sicily the rock climbing around Messina consists of 8 separate limestone crags, some of which offer multi-pitch bolted routes up to 150m long. The largest crag is at Castelmola, near Taormina, which offers single pitch sports climbing with nearly 50-recorded routes across a good selection of grades.

2 - Palermo - Trapani Area
Being close the major airports that serve Sicily this area offers an ideal place to visit for a long weekend of good quality rock climbing. The largest concentration of routes is at Monte Pellegrino, which rises up within the city of Palermo. This mountain is over 600m high and extends from south to north for several kilometres, offering a continuous sequence of limestone walls exposed on every side. The majority of the climbing is on the west side of the mountain and in all there are 8 major crags, offering single pitch and multi-pitch routes up to 200m long. There are more than 200 sports routes here, as well as long classic routes, making it the most important rock climbing area in southern Italy. However there are still enormous possibilities for new routes and long stretches of the wall are still untouched.
To the north of Palermo and rising from the sea is Monte Gallo. It is an isolated mountain consisting of a number of different peaks, with some walls up to 400m high. The rugged nature of the mountain and its steep walls is similar to a mini-Dolomites! All of the routes are multi-pitch giving big wall bolted routes up to 370m long on good quality limestone rock.
Near Trapani is one of the most famous seaside resorts of Sicily called San Vito Lo Capo. Here there are large mountains that fall straight down into the sea offering fantastic rock climbing. On Monte Monaco there are bolted multi-pitch routes between 150m to 400m long as well as single-pitch sports routes. The rock here is limestone and the grades of the routes are mainly in the 6's and 7's.

3 - Siracusa - Ragusa Area
To the south east of the island there is a large concentration of crags between Siracusa and Ragusa, which are mainly single-pitch sports routes offering a good selection of routes across all grades.
However at Monti Climiti there are bolted routes up to 100m long with 8 different crags spread out on 3 sides of the mountain. Generally there are not many routes established at each crag, and the number of bolted routes varies from 5 to 21. However the crags are separated by only a few minutes drive from each other with only a short walk to each crag. There is a good selection of single pitch routes as well as bolted multi-pitch routes across all grades on limestone rock.

Rock Climbing in Sicily - Logistics

The ideal time to visit Sicily to go rock climbing is from autumn right through to spring. It is not unusual to be climbing in shorts and t-shirt on beautiful crags overlooking the sea during the winter months.

For the majority of the multi-pitch and all of the single pitch sports routes a 60m rope will be sufficient, with 12-14 quickdraws. However for some routes it would be advisable to take 2 half 50m ropes and trad gear such as nuts and cams. All the information about the rock climbing in Sicily has been extracted from a guidebook, called "Di Roccia di Sole/Climbing in Sicily". It describes all the sports routes on the island of Sicily, but unfortunately it is currently out of print.