A friend and former colleague recently told us that a significant fraction of his ancestors lived in the famous Sicilian resort town of Taormina … before they left for America a century or so ago.

He wondered what we would think of the town, because we are so close to it — we can see it from our terrace — that we were sure to visit.

Well, in short: His relatives who left … did the right thing.

Taormina is one of those sad places on the planet, and there are more all the time, that is so charming, so interesting, so temperate in weather and blessed in scenery … that it essentially has been destroyed by wave after wave of tourists.

Whatever Taormina once was … was so long ago corrupted by its emergence as a tourist destination some two centuries ago (Goethe came and loved it and told everyone he knew) … that nothing about Taormina seems authentic or natural or real or unique to the place.

Aside from the spectacular setting.

Taormina sits atop a fist of rock thrust out from the foothills of Mount Etna and into the sea. The town is about 600 feet above the Mediterranean, and what that means is spectacular views. Of the sea, of the sole of the Italian boot. Of Mount Etna to the southwest.

In ancient times, going back to the peoples who preceded the Greek colonists, Taormina’s position made it an ideal citadel for defenders, hard to approach, fighting uphill all the way, hard to besiege and hard to supply an attacking force.

It remains difficult to reach. The A18 autostrade runs nearby, as does a non-toll road, but in each case you still are faced with long, winding drives and lots of switchbacks to reach the town, which has ultra-narrow streets and hardly a flat place near the center.

These days, anyone in a car should park it in an underground lot a few hundred yards from the main part of town, then take a shuttle that deposits you safely near the main gate and the Santa Catarina church.

What strikes you about Taormina … is that it is all about tourism. If it has any industry other than catering to tourists, it certainly is not readily apparent.

It is a city of grand hotels on the edge of cliffs, catering to moneyed clientele. For those willing to spend, Taormina might be pleasant,  even delightful. Once you fight your way to the hotel, and are sitting in the lap of leather-upholstered luxury … you can enjoy the sun and breeze and views — and venture into the crowded city only now and again.

For daytrippers, Taormina is a delightful bauble or a dark nightmare — depending on your sophistication, travel experience or perhaps your personality.

The main street, Corso Umberto, is a garish, mile-long stretch of pizzerias, overpriced clothing stores, gelaterrias by the dozen and scads of curio/knickknack shops selling the same junk — T-shirts with Marlon Brando on them (as Don Corleone), T-shirts with Homer Simpson on them (as Homer Corleone) … key chains, T-shirts with “Sicilia” or “Italia” on them. The same postcards at every shop. Saracen marionettes, expensive ceramics — lather, rinse, repeat. And that special touch that every overrun tourist town needs — furtive guys from all over the planet hawking knockoffs of expensive handbags and sunglasses.

It is a sort of diseased Disney take on what a little Sicilian hill town ought to look like. And like Disneyland/World, even the fake reality might be interesting, and the naked ambition to separate tourists from the money would be less irritating … if the place weren’t overrun by people.

The one truly interesting public place in the city is the old Greek amphitheater, which is backed up against a cliff. More great views and a semi-circle of perfect acoustics that somehow has fairly well survived Taormina’s long and often unfortunate history. But it costs eight euros (about $10) for an American just to enter the place and walk around — with no guide, no docents and practically zero explanatory signs. Your guidebook is all the guide you are going to get, though the “this place looks old” thing is fairly easy to grasp.

As we entered the amphitheater, engineers were setting up the stage for a concert; the place is still in use, which is fine, but in the interest of history it might have been better if they hadn’t put in a few hundred scalloped plastic seats in the lower rows. Ugh.

But is an acoustic marvel. Absolutely. We could hear the workmen’s conversations quite plainly even when we were perched on the upper lip of the half-bowl … probably 150 feet from (and above) them. It was a curious effect, and a tribute to the ancient inhabitants of the town, Greeks and Romans.

We had lunch nearby, at one of the hundred-plus pizzerias, and it was fine,  if a little cramped. We had been accosted by a seemingly jolly local woman and all but dragged to her pizza shop, which was in one of the hottest corners of the town — we later realized. Had we gone another 100 yards up Corso Umberto, we could have found a pizzeria with a view of the ocean that charged less. But we didn’t know that. We were lame tourists, as well.

Soon after we finished lunch … the place went completely to hell as a Celebrity cruise line ship disgorged bused-in visitors by the hundreds, and they trooped behind tour guides who seemed as disinterested in what they were saying as were the cruisers. The injection of the extra several hundred walkers and browsers made navigating the street an “excuse me, pardon me; scuse” ordeal, and we decided it was time to go.

We stopped for gelato on the way out and discovered that Taormina may have the only bad gelaterria in the country. It was slicker and bigger than the others, and that should have raised my suspicions. Alas. I had a limone medio that tasted like … nothing. An island up to its knees in lemons, and my lemon gelato tasted like smooth, cold … nothing.

We got back to the edge of town, just as buses from the parking lot were disgorging more newcomers, adding to the crowd and putting me in mind of Disney’s Main Street USA on a major holiday …  and I think we all were genuinely pleased to get to the car and get outta Dodge.

Maybe the thing to do here is try to show up in winter. The place might be gray and windswept, but at least the madding crowds would be gone.

But the city would still be laid out for strolling tourists, with the same narrow range of eat-drink-buy-kitsch businesses.

Lots of great travel spots have been ruined. Italy is full of them. Venice is long gone. Florence is darn close. Capri, Positano, most of the Amalfi Coast … shot to hell. Rome can wobble from the turistico onslaught, despite its size. Paris and London have bad days but both are, again, rescued by the size of their populations.

Taormina has no defense for the tourist horde, flogged here by glowing references 50 years old or more from the likes of Oscar Wilde, Truman Capote and D.H. Lawrence. And you go to see it once, and once only — unless you can afford to stay holed up in one of those madly expensive hotels.

Yep. Our friend’s relatives did the right thing. Otherwise, they might right now be trying to lure sunburned tourists into their pizzerias, hating them for their empty-headed boorishness and lack of knowledge of the city’s long history … but also knowing they need them to survive.  A hell of a bargain.