Piazza del Duomo and the elephant fountain

The square is the centre of everything in Catania: the cathedral of Sant'Agata on the east side, the town hall on the north, the seminary on the south, all rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake in the local pairing of black lava and white limestone. In the middle stands the Fontana dell'Elefante — a Roman-era lava elephant, given an Egyptian obelisk and set on a marble base in 1736. Catanians call it u Liotru and treat it as the city's emblem.

The photographic problem here is scale. The square is big and the elephant is small, so the frames that work are either wide, with the fountain low and the cathedral façade filling the top, or close, from the fountain's own basin looking up at the elephant against sky.

Light comes over the cathedral in the morning, which puts the façade in its own shadow but lights the western buildings; by mid-afternoon the sun has swung round and the cathedral front takes it directly. Before nine the square is close to empty and the pale stone reads clean; by eleven it is a crossroads for the whole city.

Traffic runs along two sides, so keep to the pedestrian centre, and be aware that the fountain basin itself is fenced in places.