Savoca and Forza d'Agrò

Two villages that were postcards before they were a film set

Long before a Hollywood crew found them, Savoca and Forza d’Agrò were simply two of the small hill towns strung along the ridge above the Ionian coast near Taormina and Messina - built for defence against raiders, not tourism, and largely bypassed by the coastal development that transformed Taormina itself.

That is exactly why they still look the way they do: narrow stone lanes, a handful of churches, and views back down to the sea that have changed very little in decades. This guide covers both villages as places in their own right, beyond the two specific film locations covered in The Godfather tour: what is real and what is not - what else there is to see, how to get between them, and how to plan a half-day that does not feel rushed.

Savoca beyond Bar Vitelli

Savoca’s centre is compact enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes, but it rewards a slower pace. Beyond the two sites everyone comes for, the village has a genuinely interesting medieval core: the Chiesa Madre (Santissimo Salvatore), a Franciscan monastery with catacombs holding mummified remains of local notables from past centuries, and a scattering of noble houses along the main street with weathered stone doorways worth a second look.

The catacombs beneath the Cappuccini convent are less visited than the film sites and rarely appear in tour itineraries at all, which makes them one of the more overlooked things to do here - mummified bodies preserved in a technique similar to Palermo’s better-known Capuchin Catacombs, on a much smaller and quieter scale. If macabre history interests you more than film trivia, allow time for this stop specifically; it is easy to walk past its unmarked entrance without noticing it.

The village also affords some of the better coastal views in this part of Sicily, since it sits at roughly 300 metres above sea level with an open outlook toward the Ionian Sea and, on clear days, back toward Taormina’s headland. Vespa Tour of Savoca the Godfather Experience and Bar Vitelli takes visitors through the village at a walking pace on a scooter-and-foot combination, which suits Savoca’s scale better than a coach that has to park at the edge of town regardless.

Forza d’Agrò: castle, convent, and quieter lanes

A 15-minute drive from Savoca, Forza d’Agrò sits on its own separate hilltop and has a different character - fewer visitors, and a more clearly medieval street plan of stepped lanes climbing toward a ruined Saracen-era castle at the summit. The climb to the castle ruin is on foot, uneven underfoot in places, and rewards the effort with a genuinely wide panorama over the coast and, on a clear day, as far as the Calabrian mainland across the Strait of Messina.

The Chiesa Madre di San Agostino anchors the lower part of the village, and the former convent of Sant’Agostino nearby has period features that survive from well before the film crew’s brief visit. Forza d’Agrò does not have a single headline attraction the way Savoca has Bar Vitelli; its appeal is the accumulation of quiet, unrestored streets and the view from the top, best appreciated by walking rather than driving straight up and back down.

For visitors arriving by cruise ship into Messina rather than basing themselves in Taormina, From Messina: Savoca Taormina Shore Excursion is built specifically around that timing constraint, covering both villages within a shore-excursion window and returning to the port with a buffer before departure - worth checking the return-time margin against your ship’s all-aboard time before booking any Messina-based tour.

How the two villages fit together in one visit

Because they sit only about 15 minutes apart on the same ridge road, nearly every operator and most independent visitors treat Savoca and Forza d’Agrò as a single half-day rather than two separate trips. A sensible order is Savoca first - Bar Vitelli, the Church of Santa Lucia, the Cappuccini catacombs if you have the extra 20 minutes - followed by the short drive to Forza d’Agrò for the castle climb and a slower walk through its lanes before heading back down to the coast.

Godfather Private Tour of Savoca and Forza d'd'Agrò from Messina departs from Messina and follows roughly this order with a private driver, useful if you would rather not navigate the switchback roads yourself, while The Legend of the Godfather Private Tour of Savoca and Forza d'd'Agrò with a Typical Lunch builds in a full Sicilian lunch between the two stops - a genuine convenience given how limited Savoca’s dining options are at peak hours. Savoca: il Padrino Photoshoot Tour is aimed specifically at visitors who want a guided, unhurried session at each film location for photographs rather than a fast walkthrough, worth considering if the visual side of the trip matters more to you than covering both villages in full.

Driving there yourself

Both villages are reachable by rental car from Taormina, Messina or Catania, and neither has a ZTL restriction of the kind that catches drivers out in Palermo, Catania or Syracuse - covered generally in ZTL zones and parking in Sicilian cities. The roads themselves are the real consideration: narrow provincial roads with frequent switchbacks climb roughly 300-400 metres in a short horizontal distance, which takes longer than the map distance suggests and is uncomfortable for anyone prone to car sickness on winding roads. Small car parks sit at the edge of each historic centre, since neither village’s core streets take vehicles.

If you are hiring a car for this specific trip, general guidance is in Renting a car in Sicily and Driving in Sicily: what nobody warns you about; both are worth reading before tackling these particular roads, which are typical of the hill-town driving found across eastern Sicily.

Without a car

Public transport to either village is limited to infrequent local buses that do not run on a schedule suited to a single afternoon visit, and there is no rail link. For visitors without their own car, a half-day tour or a private driver is the realistic option rather than an inconvenience - the driving time and road conditions make a self-organised bus trip more trouble than it is worth for most travellers. Day trips from Taormina and Day trips from Messina cover the wider range of options from each base, including operators that combine Savoca and Forza d’Agrò with other stops on the same day.

Food and practicalities

Both villages are small enough that dining choices are genuinely limited - a handful of family-run trattorie in each, plus Bar Vitelli itself in Savoca, which serves simple food alongside its coffee and granita. Neither village has the restaurant density of Taormina or Messina, so arriving with a plan, or booking a tour that includes lunch, avoids competing with coach groups for the same few tables around 1pm. Outside of the main midday window, both villages are considerably quieter, and an early-morning or late-afternoon visit gives a noticeably calmer experience of the same streets.

Neither village has significant accessibility accommodations - cobbled, sloped lanes and steps are the norm in both, particularly the climb to Forza d’Agrò’s castle - so travellers with mobility limitations should expect to see Bar Vitelli and the lower parts of each village rather than the full circuit. General notes on this are covered in Accessible travel in Sicily.

Two villages built for defence, not for views

Both villages sit where they do for the same historical reason: a hilltop position that made them harder to reach and easier to defend against the raiders - Arab, Norman and later Ottoman corsairs at various points - that troubled Sicily’s coastline for centuries. The views back toward Taormina and the Ionian coast that visitors now come for were, in their original context, a defensive advantage rather than a scenic one - a lookout point rather than a photo opportunity.

This shared origin is why so many of Sicily’s most visually striking hill towns, Savoca and Forza d’Agrò included, occupy positions that are dramatic to look at but genuinely inconvenient to reach, a trade-off worth keeping in mind when the drive up feels longer than expected.

Combining with the Alcantara Gorges

Travellers with a full day rather than a half-day, and comfortable with a longer overall drive, can reasonably combine a morning at Savoca and Forza d’Agrò with an afternoon at the Alcantara Gorges, a basalt river canyon inland from the coast in the opposite direction from the two villages. This works better as a full, well-paced day than an attempt to add a third stop on top of the two villages, given how much of the day the winding hill roads already consume. Families should note that the gorges involve cold water and slippery rock rather than a dry walk, a different physical demand from the villages’ cobbled lanes.

Where this fits in a wider trip

A half-day here pairs naturally with a Taormina-based stay, alongside time at Taormina itself, the ancient theatre of Taormina, or a look at Savoca as a standalone destination profile. For the full context on which scenes were actually filmed where, and how this pairs with Sicily’s other screen-tourism circuits - Montalbano’s southeast and The White Lotus’s Taormina among them - see Sicilian film tours compared. Travellers mapping this onto a longer route around the island can see where a half-day here sits within a full week in Sicily in 7 days.

The two villages reward roughly three to four unhurried hours combined - enough time for the two well-known film locations in Savoca, the quieter catacombs most visitors miss, and the climb to Forza d’Agrò’s castle for the view that neither film location can quite match.