Province of Catania



The Province of Catania (Provincia di Catania; Pruvincia di Catania) is a province in the autonomous island region of Sicily in Italy. Its capital is the city of Catania.

Subdivision
It has an area of 3552 km2 and a total population of about 1.1 million. There are 58 comunes (Italian: comuni) in the province, see Comunes of the Province of Catania. The main comunes by population are:

Territory
The province faces the Ionian Sea to the east, the Province of Messina to the north, the Province of Enna and the Province of Caltanissetta to the west, the Province of Siracusa and the Province of Ragusa to the south. Mount Etna, Europe's largest active volcano is located in the province.

Major roads
There are many major roads that cross the territory of the province. The S.S 114 (Messina-Catania-Siracusa) links many of the coastal towns from Messina to Siracusa, the S.S 121 (Catania-Caltanissetta-Palermo), which links the east coast to Palermo through the major towns of Misterbianco, Paternò and Adrano. There are also the A18 Messina-Catania and A19 Catania-Palermo motorways that pass through the province.

The S.S 114 and S.S 192 (Catania-Enna) start from the Catania by pass whilst the SS.514 runs through the southern part of the province and connects to Ragusa.

Its population is 305,717 people.

Proposed division
There has been talk for many years of splitting the Province of Catania into three separate provinces with the southern part becoming the Province of Caltagirone, the north east of Etna becoming the Province of Acireale-Giarre-Taormina. The new province would include all of the municipalities south of the Simeto River as well as some of the municipalities of Ragusa and Caltanisetta. The proposal to create this tenth province has been put to referendum in the 1980s and was defeated and in the 1990s the proposal was reformulated and put towards the Assemblea Regionale Siciliana, and nothing has been acted upon since then.