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Sicily exists in a freeze-frame hybrid of Visconti's The Leopard (fading aristocracy, crumbling palaces) and the dissolute glamour of The Godfather — well, it does for me.

This intensely romantic island contains the history of three millennia and glories in its extravagant culture and food, its vast ruins, glorious churches, showy bunches of basil and big gnarled lemons.

As there are also golden beaches and brioscio (that's ice cream served in a brioche), I'm hoping that with three children in tow, aged 11, nine and seven, this will be a family holiday that tames the tiny barbarians and invigorates their parents.

Superb Sicily: An aerial view shows the Trapani district and San Vito Lo Capo, with Monte Cofano in background

The Leopard is set on the less touristy, wilder, west side of the island, where we are headed, arriving 90 minutes later up a bumpy track at our villa, Corte del Sole. A single-storey farm building converted into an airy, high-ceilinged, three-bathroom house, it's spacious yet cosy.

A pool sparkles at the end of a lush lawn. It is chlorine-free (there are some baby frogs in it at one point; the children want to keep one as a pet) and around it there is an atmospheric hide-and-seek garden full of giant cobwebby cacti and prickly pears.

It's quiet and isolated, overlooking vineyards, wild flower meadows and olive groves all the way across a tideless sea to the distant Egadi Islands.

The children could happily spend all week right here, playing something called 'Marco Polo' in the pool, reading by the unlit stone fire on the huge sofas (I imagine it could be blissful in winter, too, remote and snug) and playing bridge (their granny has got them addicted) at the outside table in the shade where we eat. But I have other ideas.

Ten minutes away is the local town of Trapani, a blowsy beauty, which looks part-spaghetti Western set, part baroque fantasy. It's low built, with lots of decorative stonework, and seemingly more churches than people.

Fun for the whole family: Catherine, with her son and two daughters

Here we have the first brioscio, a calorie bomb of sugary, bread deliciousness the size of a small child's head.

From there, we get a cable car (a hit with the children) up the mountainside to Erice, from where you can see across the salt pans out to the glittery sea.  

We potter up and down hot cobbled streets, past snoozing dogs, to its finest pastry shop, the Pasticceria Maria Grammatico. It was set up by an orphan, raised by nuns, who taught the 500-year-old convent the art of pastry making.  

We sit in the shaded garden, among pots of geraniums, eating almond biscuits in paper cups and ice-cool  lemon granita.

Crystalline waters: San Vito Lo Capo beach is a must visit on the north west side of the island

Extra treats arrive for the children and the 'piccolo', as the smallest child becomes known, is growing accustomed to a cheek pinch from sentimental waiters.

As a rule, Sicilians don't speak English, but their warmth is palpable.

Of course we must go to a beach, and San Vito Lo Capo on the north-west tip is a perfect golden arc of sand with a mountain at one end and transparent turquoise sea to swim in.

Its backdrop is a laidback, sand-swept town with a strong African Arabic influence.

The church was an Arab fortress, though today there are monks praying in white robes. The food at Gna' Sara, serves the local speciality — fish couscous, which comes with a spicy red sauce.

We find it very hard to leave San Vito: my son is building 'Mount Etna' in the sand, while the eldest reads and the youngest is pretending to be a dog digging for a bone.

Western Sicily has some of the most beautiful Greek ruins in the world. The site of Segesta, less than half an hour from our house, was originally an Elymian city (the people who inhabited Western Sicily before anyone else arrived), and contains a near-perfect Doric temple on top of a hill covered with poppies and yellow daisies. 

Picturesque: The salt flats between Trapani and Marsala are punctuated by two old windmills

Up the hill are the remains of the old city and its jewel, an amphitheatre with a panoramic view from the top of Mount Barbaro. It looks deceptively small; its smooth marble seats, now occupied by a few weeds and the odd lizard, once sat 4,000 in an intimate semi-circle. 

The children can't resist hopping around on stage; the acoustics are still powerful. 'Friends, Romans, countrymen . . .' declares the eldest . . . what's a few centuries out when you get this far back.

The next day we are at Segesta's mortal rival of a city, Selinunte, on the coast. Here there is a well-preserved network of temples. One lies just as it has fallen; huge pillars scattered in blocks like immense Lego.

Once it was a gleaming stone colony with thousands of inhabitants; you can sense still how prosperous it must have been. At dusk, it is almost empty, and a wonderful place for the children to play make-believe.

On day four, there is a revolt. Though they have 'loved it all' the barbarians, annoyingly backed up by my husband, think I have over-played the culture card. They try to hide my list and declare a 'villa day'.

They will be padding around the cool stone floors and reading in the sun or on the admittedly very comfortable four poster in the girls' bedroom.

The youngest has just discarded armbands so is desperate to practise her widths in the shallow end.
After a short walk to the local shop, we have a picnic lunch, made in the well-stocked, open-plan kitchen; creamy cheeses, mortadella, tomato salad.

That night a chef (booked through Think Sicily) comes to cook us supper, and the children, amazingly, eat tuna carpaccio, swordfish, and less amazingly, cannoli, the local speciality of ricotta in sweet fried dough.

Cobbled streets: Catherine and her family enjoyed pottering around the mountaintop town of Erice

Enough lounging around. The next day I've seen off the mutiny and we are out again, at the salt pans on the flat plains leading to the sea; those strange, pale expanses of water and salt, punctuated by old windmills that separate the two.

Piles of salt lie in small mountains by the road, with tiles on top to keep them dry. We take a short boat trip from the pans to the ancient island of Mozia, one of four islands in the Stagnone lagoon off the west coast.

Here lie the remains of another lost civilisation: a Phoenician city from the 8th century BC, centuries before the Greeks arrived.  

A Sicilian-British heir to the Marsala wine fortune excavated the island and turned his villa into an archaeological museum.

There are pots and lamps and tiny gold jewellery, while its treasure, 'the youth of Mozia', a sophisticated Greek marble statue of a young boy has just been returned from the Getty Museum.
Mozia is hot, historic and incredibly pretty.

Like the rest of the family, I fell totally in love with it — and with Sicily and its vigorous, grubby elegance, and barely felt we'd taken the first layer off the brioche.

Travel Facts
Think Sicily's Corte del Sole (020 7377 8518, http://ift.tt/1mWilqb) costs from £2,100 a week and sleeps up to five. Prices include daily cleaning. Air One (flyairone.com) flies direct from Gatwick to Palermo from April  to the end of October, from  £62 return.