About us

Services

Guides and Staff

Hermes Sicily's tours are lead by professional guides with many years of experience. Most of the guides of our team is internal to our company while in some cases we work together with external freelance guides since many years.
All our guides are certified and authorized and have sustained a public examination, according to Italian law. Each guide speaks one or more foreign languages while studies vary depending on the guide and comprehend university level studies in archaelogy, art, cultural heritage, foreign languages. All our nature hiking guides are certified and have passed specifica classes organized by the accredited national federations. Personal studies vary among botany, ornithology, phototography and geology. Below you can find a short intro about some of the guides the you will meet during our tours.

Sebastiano

Tour guide | Back-office

Sebastiano is a tour guide and the founder of Hermes Sicily Tours. He leads tours through the old town centers, museums and he likes excursions to less famous archaeological sites. He also organized photo tours and astronomy experiences.

Eva

Tour guide | Back-office

Eva is born in Vienna (Austria) but she lives since many years in Sicily. She has studied foreign languages and is experienced in tourist hospitality. She guides groups and individual visitors to discover the town center, monuments and archaeological site of southeastern Sicily.

Gregorio

Nature guide

Gregorio is an expert of mycology and botanic. He guides trekkings to the Sicilia nature parks and during the hike he will telle you details and traditional uses of the local plants. He also leads multiday trekking tours across Sicily on the ancient country routes.

Marco C.

Radioguides assistance

Marco is an electronics technician with a long experience and much love for his job. In Hermes Sicily Tours he manages the maintenance of our radioguides but provides also the delivery to our customers.

Lucia

Tour guide

Lucia has a degree in cultural heritage and a deep knowledge about Sicilian baroque architecture. She is born in Ragusa and lives in Modica. Lucia leads groups and individual tourists to visit the town centers and archaeological sites of the provinces of Ragusa, Syracuse and Catania.

Chiara

Tour guide

Chiara lives in Modica and leads tours in the area of Ragusa and Syracuse. Beside the classic cultural itinearies she also leads themed tours about Sicilian traditions and local stories, workshops for schools and Sicilian food tastings.

Salvatore

Tour guide

Salvatore likes to explore hidden corners of Sicily and to tell about his love for the island. Guiding tourist is not only his work but a great passion that he will share with you during his tours telling about history, art and traditions of Sicily.

Barbara

Nature guide

Barbara is a hiking guide with studies in both cultural heritage and environmental sciences. She loves natural places such as canyons, rivers and waterfalls and especially the local fauna.

Marco M.

Nature guide

Marco is a hiking guide who leads groups and solo travellers to visit the Sicilian nature reserves, mount Etna, the Alcanatara river park or nature parks like Vendicari or Cavagrande. He also arranges canyoning experiences during the summer months.

Gaetano

Tour guide

Gaetano has a degree in cultural heritage. He likes early Christian and medieval art and history. He lives in Syracuse and guides tours through the town centers, museums and archaeological sites of Syracuse, Palazzolo Acreide and Noto.

Carmine

Tour guides

Carmine, as a degree in foreign languages and a PhD in tourism. He is author of more than 40 books and tour guide since 1987. He works in Catania and likes symbology in art and architecture. You will be fascinated by his tours with details about Sicilian art, movies and novels.

Gianfranco

Science experiences

Gianfranco has a degree in phisics and a long experience in optics and telescope building. With Hermes Sicily he organizes Science experiences and workshops like astronomy observations at resorts and campings.

Our story

• 2005

  Hermes Sicily archaeology and tourism is founded thanks to an idea of a small group of new tour guides. Back in these years tourism in Sicily was focused on large groups and visits to the most famous monuments. Since the first years Hermes Sicily offered also guided tours for families and solo travellers at competitive rates and a strong advertising through the website in times when online booking was just starting as new trend.

• 2006

  We started our mixed group walking tours, a program of group tours were it's possible for solo travellers to join. These were the first shared group tours organized in eastern Sicily and still nowadays it's part of our summer and Christmas schedule. In this year we also started to cooperate with small local accomodations to offer a complete Sicilian experience also to individual travellers.

• 2007

  Beside our website we also open Hermes Sicily Blog, a dynamic space with news posts every month about opening times of the monuments, SIcilian history, art and archaeology. In the same years in Italy the TV show 'Inspector Montalbano', set in Sicily, gains great success and Hermes Sicily organizes Montalbano tours to the most famous locations.

• 2009

  Now, beside the cultural tours and archaeological excursions, we started new nature hiking tours to Sicilian nature parks. The first itineraries were the Vendicari reserve and the Pantalica and Anapo valley reserve. Nowadays there are much more nature hiking options in our catalogue! In the same year we produced a collection of audioguides in mp3 format, available online, to discover Syracuse and surroundings.

• 2010

  In this year we organized our first experiental tourism events and workshops with the section 'Amica scienza' which offers astronomy experiences under the Sicilian nightsky with telescope observations at hotels, campings or in public squares.

• 2011

  On our website it's now possible to find also tours and services from our partners. Cooperation with other local professional companies is important to offer a complete service to our customers. Through our company it's also possible to book private driver services, to rent a bus or to join daytrips from Syracuse or Catania. From this year Hermes Sicily Tours is also on Tripadvisor and our customers can publish their reviews on our guides and tours. From 2011 some of our tours are also bookable through the most famous international OTAs.

• 2016

  Thanks to the cooperation with Wanderlust we have opened our Hermes Sicily Tours infodesk in Ortygia, active until 2018 to offer to travelers information about local monuments, transport and events and the option to book tours and day trips on place. We have also increased the cooperation with the main hotels where it's now possible to find the brochures of our activities. Beside our tourist's season group tours, in 2016 we also start the seasonal calendar of excursions, guided tours and excursions, organized all around the year, during week-ends to discover less known sites in Sicily.

• 2018

  Some photography events are added to our experiencial tours and Hermes Sicliy takes part and organizes 'digital invasions' to promote online the Italian cultural heritage.
  In this year we also add a useful booking system feature to our website so visitors can check the real time availability of our tours and book online.

• 2019

  For a better service to our customers, during the tours, from 2019 it's possible to rent additional Whisper radioguides. The radioguides are available for tours booked with our guides but can also be rented by external agencies.