San Berillo

San Berillo is a small but disorientingly different quarter east of Via Etnea, between the train station and the centre. The half-demolished streets are lined with battered baroque buildings, tenements with their facades sliced off, and the residue of a sex trade that has not entirely moved on. Over the last decade it has also become one of the most interesting arts neighbourhoods in Sicily, with bookshops, performance spaces, and a strip of small bars built into the empty shops.

The transformation is uneven and far from complete. It is worth a careful afternoon walk, particularly around Via delle Finanze and Via Pistone.

things to do neighbourhood
A story
San Berillo was one of the densest poor neighbourhoods of Catania until a brutal slum clearance in 1957 demolished most of it for an avenue that was never built. What remained — about fifteen narrow streets — was abandoned by the city authorities and became Catania's red-light district. Since the 2010s artists and activists have been re-occupying the empty buildings, and the area is now slowly turning into the city's most argued-about neighbourhood.

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