Italy's island holidays

Italy’s islands offer the visitor a new world, distinct and remote in many instances from the Italian mainland. Each island is shaped by a different sea, a different history, and a different pace of life. Expressions offers an excellent, tried and tested selection of holidays to the Italian islands of Capri, Ischia, Sicily, the Aeolian Islands and Sardinia. Combine with each other and the mainland, great for single centre holidays but multi-centre tours and combinations.

Sicily rewards those who come with time and curiosity. Palermo's markets and Byzantine mosaics sit close to Greek temples at Agrigento and Selinunte, while the interior unfolds into wheat-gold hills and baroque hill towns like Noto and Ragusa. Add the volcanic drama of Etna and a coastline that shifts from the fishing harbours of the east to the wilder Egadi Islands, and Sicily emerges as Italy's most complete island — equal parts archaeology, gastronomy and landscape.

Sardinia is quieter and, in places, wilder still. Beyond the celebrated turquoise coves of the north-east, the island holds Nuragic tower-settlements older than the pyramids, a granite interior threaded with walking trails, and a food culture — bottarga, malloreddus, myrtle liqueur — largely unchanged by tourism. It suits travellers drawn to open space as much as to the coast.

Capri, by contrast, is compact theatre. The Faraglioni rocks, the Gardens of Augustus, and a funicular ride up from the Marina Grande to the piazzetta have drawn visitors since Roman emperors first built villas here. A night or two allows the island to settle into something more than a day-trip postcard, particularly once the crowds from Naples and Sorrento have gone home.

Ischia, its lesser-known neighbour, offers a gentler counterpoint: thermal springs, the Aragonese Castle rising from the sea, and a green, volcanic interior of vineyards and chestnut woods. It is the island Neapolitans themselves favour for a proper rest.

Salina, the second largest of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily's north coast, is smaller-scale again, and greener than its volcanic neighbours — its twin extinct craters give the island its name and its distinctive silhouette. Capers and Malvasia wine are the local staples, best sampled in the villages of Malfa and Pollara, the latter familiar to anyone who has seen Il Postino.

With no direct flights and only a handful of small hotels, Salina rewards travellers seeking the Aeolians without Stromboli's crowds or Lipari's day-trippers — an island for slow mornings and long, unhurried dinners looking out over the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Together, these Italian islands demonstrate why "Italy" resists generalisation — and why a tailor-made itinerary, built around the right combination of them, is so rewarding.