The White Lotus: A Sicilian Week of Suspicion

Almost all of the season is set here: episode 1 presents the guests and staff of this luxury resort, the fictional White Lotus of Sicily. The real building was founded in 1374 as a Dominican convent and transformed into a hotel in 1896; today it is a Four Seasons, a reimagined 14th-century convent overlooking the Ionian Sea and Mount Etna. Its former guests include Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren.

Visitor guidance: Still a working Four Seasons hotel above the Ionian Sea.

Episode 2 sends the guests out shopping, sightseeing and eating in local restaurants, and the grandest stop is Taormina's ancient theatre, the second largest Hellenistic theatre in Sicily after Syracuse. Built in the third century BC, it measured 107 metres across and could hold around 10,000 spectators, and it sits as panoramically above the sea as the hotel itself.

In episode 3 Daphne organizes a trip to Noto, taking Harper with her. The cameras pick out the cathedral atop its wide staircase, clearly recognisable over the town. The real cathedral was built in Sicilian Baroque style between the early 18th century and 1776. Its dome collapsed in 1996, weakened by an earlier earthquake, and the rebuilt church reopened in 2007.

The Noto day trip ends with a girls' night: the two women spend the night in a Baroque palace Daphne has rented, Villa Tasca. The show places it in Noto, but the villa is actually four hours away in Palermo, in an 8-hectare park on the road leading from the city to Monreale.

In episode 4 Tanya makes friends with Quentin, a wealthy gay Brit, and in episode 5 he hosts her and Portia at his Palermo villa. The real house is Villa Elena, a residence near Noto restored by designer Jacques Garcia — once a monastery, and still Garcia's private residence. It becomes central to the twist befalling Tanya, the moment her Sicilian adventure turns dark.

Location precision: The sources place Villa Elena near Noto without an address, and it is a private home, so this stop has no pin.

For one evening the season dresses up for the opera: Quentin's circle takes Tanya to the Massimo Bellini Theatre in Catania, where the foyer and stalls astonish her, while Portia and Jack visit Palermo. The real theatre is an opera house on Piazza Vincenzo Bellini, named after the local-born composer and inaugurated on 31 May 1890 with his masterwork, Norma.

In episode 4 Quentin tells Tanya a story about Isola Bella off the coastline of Taormina — and in the last episode Daphne and Ethan visit it. The Pearl of the Ionian Sea sits in a small bay, often joined to the mainland beach by a narrow path. Trevelyan bought the island in 1890 and built a small house facing the sea, planting exotic species around it. On its beach, Daphne and Ethan have a heart-to-heart about the behaviour of her husband Cameron.