3 Best Sights in Central Sicily and the Mediterranean Coast, Sicily

A vast archaeological site in a remote location, Morgantina long provided rich pickings for illegal excavators: when Italian detectives raided an 18th-century villa in Enna belonging to a Sicilian art dealer, they discovered more than 30,000 ancient artifacts, most of them plundered from Morgantina. In 1986, American archaeologist Malcolm Bell, director of Princeton University’s excavations at Morgantina, established that the heads, hands, and feet of 6th-century BC Greek statues of goddesses from a private collection exhibited at the Getty museum outside of Los Angeles also derived from Morgantina. Identified as Demeter and Persephone, the statues were acroliths, with wooden bodies (long rotted away) and marble extremities. Returned to Sicily in 2009 after a lengthy legal battle, they are currently displayed at a small museum in the village of Aidone, beautifully lit and hauntingly "dressed" by Sicilian fashion designer Marella Ferrara.

Equally powerful is the so-called Aphrodite Getty, or Venus of Malibu, bought by the Getty in 1987 for $18 million on the basis of provenance documents that were later proved to have been forgeries. Returned to Sicily in 2011, the hefty maturity of her body, revealed by wind-blown drapery, has led most scholars to identify her as the mother goddess Demeter. Other objects returned from the Getty include the Eupolmos Silver, a set of ritual dining ware, and a head of Hades, identified as belonging to Morgantina when a student working in the site archives discovered a terra-cotta curl of blue-tinted "hair" and suspected that it belonged to a head on display in the Getty. When the curl was sent to the museum, it was found to be a perfect fit, and in 2016 the head was returned to Sicily.

In 2005, after four years of painstaking restoration in Rome (and several attempts to keep it there in the capital), the Dancing Satyr, the ancient Greek statue found by fishermen off the town's coast, found its permanent home here in the deconsecrated church of Sant’Egidio. Exquisitely lit and larger than life, it is a truly extraordinary work (despite missing both arms and a leg) caught mid-air, mid-dance in the throes of ecstasy, with the musculature and grace of movement associated nowadays with contemporary ballet. Scholars think it probably formed part of a group with other dancing maenads, lost when the ship carrying them capsized in the Sicilian Channel. Ancient Greek bronze statues are extremely rare—only five have survived—as bronze was precious, and most were melted down. The satyr was created using the lost wax process, a technology designed to use as little bronze as possible: a clay model of the statue was made and fired, and when it cooled, it was covered with a layer of wax, followed by another layer of clay, this time with several holes. Then liquid bronze (heated to something like 1800°F) was poured through the holes. The melted wax then ran out, and the clay core turned to sand, leaving a bronze shell that would then have been polished. Other finds from under the sea are displayed in the museum, the most intriguing of which is the bronze foot of an elephant.

A 20-minute drive from Caltabellota, the sleepy village of Burgio is home to this cultural treasure, a former convent that is now a museum dedicated to the region's ceramics. It perches on a picturesque hilltop overlooking the village, as well as the surrounding orange and olive groves, and Caltabellotta in the distance. Inside, you can explore the fascinating history of the local pottery and its distinctive colors, with some examples dating back to the 1600s. Ask for a guide at the reception to get the most out of your visit. A bonus is that the museum is open on Sunday, when some of the other smaller villages in the area seem to come to a standstill.