Viaggio in Sicilia · 2026
Viaggio in Sicilia
Sicily, without hurry. A travel blog that grew into a digital ecosystem, with a new website, an iPhone app, local guides and a layer of structured data.
Viaggio in Sicilia is a travel blog told by the people who live the island. In a few months it became a complete digital ecosystem: a website rebuilt from scratch, a native iPhone app, a programme for local guides and, underneath it all, a layer of structured data.
The idea is simple. In an age of mass-produced content, the real value is human data: places actually visited, first-hand advice, local people. The project organizes it, links it together and brings it to travellers, before they leave and during the trip.
The website
Every place on the island has its own page: where it is, how to get there from the nearest airport, port or station, the weather month by month and the best time to go. Around the places grow guides and itineraries, a recipe book with the dialect name of every dish, the wines of Sicily with their grapes and appellations, a dictionary of Sicilian dialect, a calendar of festivals and walking routes with GPX tracks that work even without signal.
A map of everything
Places, guides, events, recipes, wines, routes and even geotagged Instagram posts all live on a single super map, to explore the island visually and filter it by what you are looking for.
The home page follows the seasons: the opening slider picks places that make sense right now, art cities in winter, the sea and the islands in summer. Pages load fast, work in light and dark mode, and every photo credits its author.
The iPhone app
A native app designed for two moments. Before the trip, to explore the same places, stories and recipes, written to be read on a phone. During the trip, as a companion: what’s around you with an alert when you pass something worth seeing, your trips on the map day by day, the next stop on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, and everything you have already opened available offline.
When the app opens, the logo writes itself like a signature.
Design your own trip
Readers have an account, badges that tell who they are and a heart to save places, recipes and events on every device. With Design your trip they pick places on the map, put them in order and split them into days: the trip is saved to their profile and carried into the app, where it becomes the guide for each day.
People, not algorithms
Local guides know places better than any algorithm. A dedicated programme connects them directly with travellers, with no commission and no middlemen. Each guide is invited through a private, personalised onboarding page and then manages their own profile, while the editors approve photos and bio with one click.
Data as the foundation
Under the website and the app, everything about Sicily is stored as linked data, not isolated pages. A wine leads to its appellation, its grapes and the recipes it goes with; a place leads to its guides, events and nearby places. The same source feeds the website, the app, the map and the tailor-made PDF guides, and every page describes itself to search engines and AI assistants with structured data.
One design system
Brand yellow as the accent, warm black and white, the Urbanist typeface and contour lines as a recurring sign, like a topographic map of the island seen up close. The same components everywhere, on the website and in the app: one way to do everything.
Behind the scenes, a custom Directus CMS is organized for writers rather than developers, with a built-in manual, nightly image processing and automations that keep the map and the links up to date on their own.
A website to explore, an app to keep in your pocket, the right local people and a heritage of data curated by hand: everything you need to discover Sicily and really travel it.