After his father's death in 1899, Kitson moved to Sicily and settled in Taormina, where he designed and built Casa Cuseni, a villa with views of Mount Etna, Europe's most famous active volcano.

He selected Taormina at a particular moment in its history: it had become a popular winter resort for wealthy northern Europeans, and was known to be welcoming to artists and tolerant to gay men -- at least, those who were foreign and moneyed.

Edward Chaney, an expert on the evolution of the Grand Tour and of Anglo-Italian cultural relations, described the town as attracting "male refugees from more repressive climates.

Kitson owned a small collection of von Gloeden's portraits of ephebes and heads of handsome Arab youths.

One of Kitson's sketchbooks has a large group of sketches of young men, clothed as if Arabs and taken after von Gloeden's models.

[6] Kitson also had a long friendship with Bobbie Pratt-Barlow, a distant relative who settled in the Villa Rosa just below Casa Cuseni.

Kitson travelled extensively around Europe by train and took long voyages to North Africa, Egypt, Istanbul and, once, to Ceylon and India.

[7] He lived at Casa Cuseni until he was forced to return to England when World War II reached Italy and Sicily became a battleground.

He was buried in the town's non-Catholic cemetery, in the presence of his Sicilian friends, some English expatriates and the Deputy British Consul in Sicily.

Charles Leslie writes that Kitson had a brief romantic relationship with Frank Brangwyn, whom he later employed for decoration of his Taorminese villa.

Casa Cuseni has been declared an Italian National Monument and now hosts a museum of fine art and a small hotel.