Grotta dell'Addaura

High on the seaward flank of Monte Pellegrino, the limestone headland that closes the bay of Palermo to the north, a group of shallow caves holds one of the most enigmatic scenes in European prehistoric art. Scratched into the rock by hunter-gatherers at the very end of the last Ice Age, a ring of human figures stands around two others whose bodies are bent sharply backwards, while horses, wild cattle and deer move around them. Most Palaeolithic art shows animals; the Addaura engravings are rare in placing people at the centre and arranging them in what looks like a deliberate, staged composition.

The caves open about 70 metres above the sea, south-east of the beach of Mondello, and had long been known for finds of bones, stone tools and even the remains of a dwarf elephant, a species that once lived on Sicily. Their art came to light by chance. After the Allied landings in Sicily in 1943, the caves were used to store munitions, and an accidental explosion brought down part of the rock surface, exposing engravings that had been hidden under a crust of deposits. They were noticed by a local man in the early 1950s and studied by the archaeologist Jole Bovio Marconi, then responsible for the antiquities of western Sicily, who published them in 1953. The carvings are attributed to the late Epigravettian period, roughly contemporary with the Magdalenian art of France and Spain, and share a style with the engravings of the Grotta del Genovese on the island of Levanzo.

What the central scene means remains open. Some scholars see acrobats or dancers performing; others a ritual, perhaps an initiation or a sacrifice, pointing to lines that may be cords tied around the necks of the two arched figures; Bovio Marconi herself suggested an erotic reading. Two of the surrounding figures seem to wear masks, which has encouraged talk of shamans. Palermo, spread along the bay below, is the capital of Sicily, a city layered with Phoenician, Arab, Norman and Baroque history, and Monte Pellegrino has been its landmark for millennia; Goethe, travelling through Sicily in 1787, called it the most beautiful headland in the world.

Getting there

The caves lie on the north-eastern slope of Monte Pellegrino, above the seaside district of Addaura between Mondello and the city, about 8 km from the centre of Palermo. Falcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO) is about 23 km to the west along the coast, and Palermo Centrale railway station links the city with the rest of Sicily and with mainland Italy.