The moment it first occurs to me that Catania is Italy’s most underrated city, I’m zooming along the Ionian coast on the back of a silver scooter as my new friend Daniele steers us toward a stretch of shoreline called the Cyclops Riviera. Daniele is a philosophy grad student I met while wandering around the University of Catania, part of which is housed in a late-Baroque monastery on the site of the ancient acropolis.

He’s eager to show off some of his city’s charms and contradictions, beginning with a meal of tender horse-meat fillets (a local specialty), followed by a spin through the fishing village of Aci Trezza, just outside of town. We park next to a harbor spiked with ancient lava rocks that residents say are the ones referenced in Homer’s Odyssey, which now, smoothed by the waves, serve as diving platforms for barefoot kids.