Q 01/05

Which city is the capital of Sicily?

A) Catania

B) Messina

C) Palermo

D) Syracuse

Answer · why

C) Palermo

Palermo. Phoenician traders founded it, and it became the island's chief city after Arab forces captured it in 831 and made it their capital.

Q 02/05

Sicily takes its name from which Iron Age people who lived in the east of the island?

A) The Sicani

B) The Elymians

C) The Ausones

D) The Sicels

Answer · why

D) The Sicels

The Sicels. Tradition held that they had once lived in central Italy, near the Tiber, before some of them crossed to the island that took their name.

Q 03/05

Which ancient Greek name for Sicily describes the island's shape?

A) Sikania

B) Trinacria

C) Magna Graecia

D) Hesperia

Answer · why

B) Trinacria

Trinacria. It means 'three headlands', for the capes at the island's corners, and the ancients took it to be Homer's Thrinacia, where Odysseus's crew ...

Q 04/05

What is Sicily's most prominent landmark and Europe's tallest active volcano?

A) Mount Etna

B) Stromboli

C) Vulcano

D) Vesuvius

Answer · why

A) Mount Etna

Mount Etna. Its height is never fixed: about 50 eruptions in six months of 2021 piled enough lava and ash on one crater rim to make the mountain some ...

Q 05/05

What separates Sicily from Calabria on the Italian mainland?

A) The Strait of Otranto

B) The Gulf of Taranto

C) The Tyrrhenian Sea

D) The Strait of Messina

Answer · why

D) The Strait of Messina

The Strait of Messina. Its rocks and whirlpools so alarmed ancient sailors that tradition placed Scylla and Charybdis here, the twin monsters Odysseus...