a town in Sicily, which is situated on a high rock, and is 88 miles south of Messina. Of its origin little is known. A colony from the isle of Naxos settled at the foot of Etna, at no great distance from the shore, and at about a league or a league and a half from the present situation of Taormina. Dionysius the Tyrant attacked this colony, and either took or set fire to their city. The inhabitants retired to the rocks of Mount Taurus; among which they found a tract of ground sufficiently level and secure, and of sufficient extent. Here therefore they built a city; which, after the mountain, they named Tauromenium. It was at length raised to a very flourishing state by trade, and became celebrated as a seat of the arts, the remains of which show that the fine arts must have been once successfully cultivated at Tauromenium.

Among other remains are still to be seen a spacious theatre, a tomb, and a long natural grotto, which appears to have been anciently adorned within with artificial ornaments. After the inhabitants of Taormina embraced Christianity, they still continued to visit this grotto with devout veneration. Instead of the Pagan divinities to whom it had before been sacred, they substituted a saint, the venerable St Leonard. But St Leonard did not long draw crowds to this grotto; and the Christians have either defaced its Pagan decorations, or suffered them to fall into decay by the injuries of time. It is now black and smoky; and it is with difficulty that any remains of the Greek paintings with which it was once ornamented can be distinguished.