We’re climbing higher up the mountain in Southern Sicily, to view a Norman Castle, where the people sought shelter on higher and higher ground to escape plunderers. The castle and fort overlooks the village of Forza d’Agro.  So, leaving the port at Taormina, let’s go!

a castle here, a castle there…….

Let’s look at some of the sites going up the mountain. There’s another fortress on the horizon…….

and another look at it from higher up…….

and from this view……….

The road takes us in tunnels burrowed through the mountain………….

Here, you can see how the road curves up the mountain……….higher and higher.

Forza d’Agro, between sky and the sea……………that’s for sure!  The inner core of this village has remained unchanged over the years and for this reason it has been used as the backdrop in a number of films, including the Godfather trilogy. Today, it seems we are the only ones here and ………..it is very remote!

This is the newish side of Forza d’Argo and the main road to the village……… There are no cars inside the village because it is too small and the streets are just walkways, so we’ll leave the bus here and walk the rest of the way up.

As we walked to our destination we entered a beautiful park………with a restaurant that served pizza

and this is the walkway around the park…….awesome!

A slice of the Garden of Eden up here!

Walking through the neighborhood of  the newer homes……

were gardens and walls………

You can see where the old architecture has been mingled with the new………

before we climbed higher to the church……….

Ahhhhh, I’m getting there!

I made it! It looks like this may have been a pagan temple before there was a church built here. See the columns?

and looking back from where we came from…….

out over the village…….

we see the fortress on the ridge above us…….which is now a cemetery!

Now, let’s look at some of the pathways that are used for the movie sets….let’s go this way……..

Wow, this looks interesting! The old passageways were used in the scenes of the Godfather films to portray the village of Corleone, where the Godfather family originally came from. They were filmed off and on and used in several of the movies.

It looks like some folks are moving into the neighborhood……and sprucing it up……..

Are these buildings getting an update or are they being restored to keep their old world charm for the movie sets? It’s hard to tell!

More of the village when I show the Thursday Doors ………but it’s time to leave……..

and we’re going back down the curvy road……

One last look at the sunflowers……I keep wondering where all the movie actors, staff and personnel would stay while making a movie in Forza d’Argo. There didn’t appear to be any hotels or anything here and I can’t imagine going up and down that mountain everyday! Just a thought! See you next with the Forza d’Argo Doors!