Easy hikes and walks in Zona Speciale di Conservazione 'Conca del Salto' - ITA080011

You can hear its roar from afar

No marl! Limestone (marine sediments)

It represents the highest and most panoramic point of Mangiagesso. Behind it the route continues with a fairly technical descent

The Madonna della Catena (of the Chains) is known for being able to solve all human problems. She is particularly popular with pregnant women. In the past, for example, pregnant women climbed the steep steps in front of the small church on their knees. It was said that this would make the birth easier.

Bring fresh flowers and grass and call the donkeys. They will definitely come.

In the old dwelling, there are diagonal stripes of white marl between the limestone on the left wall. This is an indication that this stone was once deeper under water.

It is one of the oldest churches in the current city of Scicli, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693 under concession from the Confrati of the church of San Michele Arcangelo to the Augustinian nuns. The reconstruction works, begun in the second half of the eighteenth century by the Syracusan architect Michelangelo Alessi, concluded in 1859 under the guidance of the architect Giuseppe Far» Palermo. The main façade has three orders, with a slightly convex surface enlivened by free columns with Corinthian capitals which, in the first order, flank the main portal surmounted by a heraldic shield; in the second order, a window enriched with floral motifs and closed by a wrought iron window. The third order denotes a neoclassical architecture characterized by a triangular tympanum that concludes the facade and by flat pilaster strips with Corinthian capitals that replace the columns and frame the belfry decorated with festoons. Of extreme interest is the solution given to the side portal of via F. Mormina Penna as the architect having to deal with a small space resorts to illusionistic effects. The interior is an extraordinary jewel of art and there is no shortage of stuccos, frescoes, paintings, sculptures, decorations reproducing musical instruments in relief, called "musical choirs". The colors and stuccos of the whole are not those originating from the eighteenth century but the work of the sculptor Giuseppe Sesta Poliziano in 1851. On the curved surface there are four altars on which are placed paintings depicting St. Augustine, St. Michael the Archangel, the Adoration of the Magi to Baby Jesus and an oval depicting the Madonna delle Grazie and finally a wooden crucifix dating back to the fourteenth century. On the vault there are paintings from the second half of the century XIX depicting episodes from the life of St. Augustine by Gaetano Of Stefano. In the sacristy, precious remains of Christian Saints and Martyrs are preserved in an artistic reliquary.

Registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a "masterpiece of the human creative genius of the late Baroque age" and defined by the art historian Anthony Blunt as "one of the most significant and original eighteenth-century baroque monuments in the province of Ragusa", Palazzo Beneventano it is the most representative baroque building in the city and among the most celebrated examples of "fantastic decoration". Pompous and refined at the same time, it has no main facade. Built on a corner, its central element is a corner with ashlar and diamond-cut pilasters which links two elegant facades decorated with masks, sculpted portals and balconies supported by brackets with grotesque figures. Above, under the cornice, the Beneventano coat of arms supported by two dark brown heads.