Regional Naturalistic Museum of Isolabella

Isolabella is an islet, formerly known as the "island of Santo Stefano", in the center of the bay of the same name bounded to the north by the cape of Sant'Andrea and to the south by cape Taormina, or San Leo. Joined to the mainland by a short submerged isthmus or emerged depending on the tide, the island, with the surrounding bay, undoubtedly represents one of the most evocative and renowned historical landscapes of the Mediterranean. According to local traditions, however in need of documentary confirmation, the islet was donated to the city of Taormina by King Ferdinand of Bourbon in 1806, on the occasion of his visit to the city, and it would have been placed in a garden by the English noblewoman Florence Trevelyan. The current appearance of the island is, however, mainly due to the works carried out by the last owners, the Bosurgi industrialists from Messina, after World War II. They, in fact, next to the existing building located at the top of the island, built a villa divided into pavilions camouflaged between the rocks and the luxuriant vegetation, and therefore almost invisible from the outside; even the large swimming pool is well hidden among the trees. Despite the tampering suffered, the island still retains the original Mediterranean scrub, to which are added some exotic essences planted by the last owners; an endemic species of red-bellied lizard lives here. The discovery of various archaeological finds in the context of underwater research is a confirmation of the intense frequentation of the bay since very ancient times; it housed one of the "scari", that is one of the landing points that dotted the Taormine bays and which, by connecting to the historical road network behind, now almost disappeared, ensured a rapid connection with the city, before the relatively recent construction of carriage roads . The "scaro" located in the northern part of the bay is indicated, in the historical cartography of the eighteenth century, as "scaro dei monaci", perhaps because it was at the service of some Taormina monastery or, more specifically, of the disappeared monastery of Sant'Andrea which stood on the 'adjacent promontory which has kept its name. The geological data relating to this area indicate a different ancient landscape with a coastline further back than the current one, a relative sea level about 2m higher and the island detached from the mainland.