Street map and short description of Catania in Sicily.

With some 306,000 inhabitants (750,000 in the metropolitan area) it has the second highest population density on the island. The city's patron saint is Saint Agatha. Catania is located on the east coast of the island, halfway between Messina and Siracusa and is at the foot of the active volcano Mount Etna.
The position of Catania at the foot of Mount Etna was the source, as Strabo remarks, both of benefits and evils to the city. For on the one hand, the violent outbursts of the volcano from time to time desolated great parts of its territory; on the other, the volcanic ashes produced a soil of great fertility, adapted especially for the growth of vines. (Strab. vi. p. 269.) One of the most serious calamities of the former class was the eruption of 121 BCE, when great part of its territory was overwhelmed by streams of lava, and the hot ashes fell in such quantities in the city itself, as to break in the roofs of the houses. Catania was in consequence exempted, for 10 years, from its usual contributions to the Roman state. (Oros. v. 13.) The greater part of the broad tract of plain to the southwest of Catania (now called the Piano di Catania, a district of great fertility), appears to have belonged, in ancient times, to Leontini or Centuripa (modern Centuripe), but that portion of it between Catana itself and the mouth of the Symaethus, was annexed to the territory of the latter city, and must have furnished abundant supplies of corn. The port of Catania also, which was in great part filled up by the eruption of 1669, appears to have been in ancient times much frequented, and was the chief place of export for the corn of the rich neighboring plains. The little river Amenanus, or Amenas, which flowed through the city, was a very small stream, and could never have been navigable.