Talk:Catania

Buried in lava?

I note that the article claims that it was buried in lava 7 times. However, when I looked at the remains of the Roman amphitheater, I didn't think they looked very melted.

Perhaps it should be "volcanic ash" rather than lava?

Not that it matters much to the people caught by it, but it matters to the people digging out the city afterwards... --Alvestrand 15:22, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

It was indeed buried in lava seven times. the new city was built upon the old one, and you can see in Stesicoro Square the buried city. maybe citation needed? I'll try to find one, however i'm sure about it.Sickboy3883 17:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

A class went missing - myth or reality?

According to local tradition, a number of decades ago a whole class went missing whilst visiting the underground amphitheatre (under Piazza Stesicoro). -- E.Wilson 137.195.176.12 14:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

i'm from catania and i've heard about this fact many times, when i was a child.

well, as far as i know, it is just a hoax told to children to stop them trying to explore the underground caves. actually, many people here in catania still believe it is a true story, but there are no proofs neither in local newspapers or reliable books about the truth of this tale. :) -- FrederiQ (registered user of it.wiki) 81.208.83.216 13:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: Add Map

I believe this article would be improved, and become more informative if a map of Sicily showing where Catania is located was added. Since I am new to the Wikipedia community, I don't know how to do this yet. Could anyone help?--Litguy43 16:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)John LoPresti/litguy43

Improvement on the article

I had made several momentous improvement on the sections Culture and Transportations of this page and corrected some factual errors on the infobox. These improvement have been cancelled and the page returned to the previous version. Why has this carried out? If somebody asked for sources couldn't he ask here for them? I would be gladly provide them Drunkpiper (talk) 09:48, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't me, you'd have to take it up with User:El Greco as (s)he was the one who reverted you. But I would guess it was a combination of a complete lack of references (see Wikipedia:Citing sources) and a fair bit of it being pretty trivial (like the youth hostel stuff. Wikipedia has pretty strict guidelines on what is and isn't notable, and hence valid for inclusion in an article - see Wikipedia:Notability. The sources thing isn't an optional extra, it's pretty fundamental to how Wikipedia works - see Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Meanwhile, El Greco, might I gently suggest a read of WP:DONTBITE? ;-/ More generally folks, we really need a lot more quality references on this article, and a read of Wikipedia:Embedded list wouldn't hurt either.... FlagSteward (talk) 18:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. I have already spoken with ElGreco on his talk page. Yep, I guess he reverted back because of the lack of references. I will gradually re-adjust my improvements referencing them. You see, I live in Catania and all the information I provided has solid ground and shares a neutral point of view. Some of the adjustements I had made were corrections to factual errors, for example, Scapagnini is no more mayor of the city. As for the Youth Ostel stuff, it is not trivial, because it is one of the few points in the city where a guest or a visitor could have one of the better views of the Amenano river, so it's a factual error to say "The river could be seen in just one point", as the current revision states. More generally speaking, references are great, but how can one reference for example these sentences?

"Catania is the city of the writer Giovanni Verga who is the main exponent of the literary movement Verismo (Italian Naturalism)

The University of Catania dates back to 1434 and it is the most ancient university of Sicily. Nowadays it hosts 12 faculties and over 62'000 students.

The city is base of the newspaper "La Sicilia" and of the tv-channel "Antenna Sicilia/Sicilia Channel". Several others local television channels have their headquarters in Catania. Several free-press magazines are issued in the city."

How could I reference these? By linking to the official sites of the University or of the city paper? I think that providing information about the biggest University in Sicily and the city newspaper it is momentous... Any suggestion welcomed on how to reference these...

Another thing. Most of the reference I could provide sadly are in Italian language. Are these valid?

Looking forward to your comments. Cheers Drunkpiper (talk) 14:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

With stuff like "you can see the river from one place", the first thing to ask is whether it belongs in the article at all, rather than "correcting" it to list all the other places you can see it from. Unless there's some historically interesting reason for it, (eg invading soldiers sneaking into the city were discovered at that place), then that just wants to be deleted. General "travel guide" stuff doesn't belong here, as WP:NOTTRAVEL puts it "Wikipedia is not a place to re-create content more suited to entries in hotel guides, culinary guides, travelogues, and the like". Have a look at some of the best city articles for ideas of the style you should aim for, and what sections you should include, and how much space you should devote to each subject. An article like Dundee would possibly be a fairly close match. And note all those lovely references!!! :-)

It's fine to cite "boring" stuff like the date of the foundation of the university from the university website (see {{cite web}} for how to do that), but if there was an argument about it you should use a separate source, for instance a book about the history of education in Sicily or something. Comparative stuff like "the oldest" should really come from a third party source, although a list of university foundation dates would be fine, people could work out that Bologna is not in Sicily... Stuff like number of students is OK from the university website, but it's better from a government website that uses the same method to count students at different universities. The location of La Sicilia and AS/SC would be fine from their websites. The university is important to include, the media outlets are medium-important, encyclopedias are more interested in stuff like history.

The Verga stuff splits into two - the fact that he was born in Catania, and the claim that he was the "main exponent of Verismo". The first is a definite "fact" that should be pretty easy to establish from any "serious" biographical work about Italian literature, the second is the sort of subjective fact that is much harder to source. As it happens, I've a copy of The Oxford Companion to English Literature on my shelf, which is about as gold-plated a reference as you could want and which confirms both facts about Varga, so just for you I'll do those references for free. :-))

On the Italian reference thing, see WP:RSUE. In general English sources are preferred wherever possible, but Italian ones are OK if you can't find English equivalents. It's amazing what you can find in Google Books and Google News if you know what search terms to use, and switch to www.google.co.uk . Certainly for basic history and geography you should be able to find stuff in English, but for eg mayoral politics you may need Italian sources. I would try and keep to the "big names" like La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera - partly because anglophone readers will be more comfortable with them as sources, and partly because if some fact about Catania is not important enough for the Italian national newspapers, then it's probably not notable enough to include in Wikipedia. HTH FlagSteward (talk) 16:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. Soon, I will gradually re-adjust the article referencing as much as possibile my contributes. Cheers from Catania, Drunkpiper (talk) 09:59, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone needs to fix the Etymology section. The language is not only atrocious, but the grammar is flat out incorrect. The (incorrectly-used and redundant) long words and awkward phrases don't completely hide the fact that a majority of the sentences are actually fragments lacking main verbs. I tried to merge the first two paragraphs into one that is coherent. I won't say I did a great job. Someone should spend some time to really clean it up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.56.5.219 (talk) 10:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

In the sentence "After the earthquake of 1693 it was sobriously rebuilt on the same place but with a different orientation." what does "sobriously" mean? A Google search for the word only returns this article, and one other about an italian hotel. Mike Stone (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Removed. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 14:51, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Expanding the Article

I have made several contributions (expecially on the Culture and Transportation sections) and I've noted that several other contributions on the History sections of this article have been carried out in these days. This could be a great chance to improve the article, that is rated Top priority both on the Sicilian and Italian projects. Such a high priority rating is appropriate, the city being the second city of Sicily and one of the most important in the whole of Italy (10th most populated Italian city, see here [1]). In particular I think that it is needed a section about contemporary history and the Main sights section IMO should be not a mere list. Drunkpiper (talk) 13:54, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Sigonella

The paragraph about how American Naval Air Station Sigonella boosts the economy of the city is blatantly exaggerated (its impact on the economy of a 650'000 pop. area is actually not that big) and should be checked for NPOV. Drunkpiper (talk) 20:22, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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Population

The population data this article cites is a 2015 estimate, but the Italian article cites 2016 data found here. Should we update the data? Black-Velvet 22:24, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

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Climate data

Would it be more appropriate to replace with raw Italian data , despite need to translate the legend ? Here is the link https://web.archive.org/web/20161002083543/http://clima.meteoam.it/web_clima_sysman/Clino6190/CLINO459.txt Matthew_hk tc 18:21, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

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Exporting corn in Roman times?

The article mentions exporting corn twice. First in Foundation "The port of Catania appears to have been much frequented in ancient time and was the chief place of export for the corn of the rich neighbouring plains." And the second time in Roman times "Cicero repeatedly mentions it as, in his time, a wealthy and flourishing city; it retained its ancient municipal institutions, its chief magistrate bearing the title of Proagorus; and appears to have been one of the principal ports of Sicily for the export of corn.[45] "

The corn is imported from Mexico and was started being cultivated in Europe only after Colonial times so at least 16th century. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.86.71.125 (talk) 06:43, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

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Exported corn in Roman times?

If corn wasn't introduced to Europe until after 1492, how does cite #45 say the Cicero notes Catania as a major port for exporting corn? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.222.203.123 (talk) 18:20, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

1860-1939?

Big gap in the history of the city from 1860 to WW2, yet that seems to have been a critical period. Can anyone explain what happened economically during this period? It was obviously affluent in the late 19th Century, just from looking at the beautiful buildings but it now looks like not a single building has been painted, repaired or renovated in the last 100 years. Every street is crumbling, filthy, and utterly dilapidated. What went wrong? 2.38.150.95 (talk) 19:33, 17 October 2022 (UTC)