Necropolis of Pantalica — necropolis
Danny Krull · CC BY-SA 2.0

Necropolis of Pantalica

Pantalica

  • 2 min read
  • 37.133° N 14.983° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • No trace survives of the prehistoric houses; Paolo Orsi argued the people lived in light huts of wood, reeds and straw that weather simply erased.
  • Around 1050 BC the community seems to have moved away to the Cassibile area, returning to Pantalica in the first half of the 9th century BC.
  • Orsi's finds include red-burnished pottery, small knives and daggers, and bronze brooches and rings laid beside the dead.
  • In 1092 the Norman chronicler Geoffrey Malaterra mentioned an Arab community at a place he called Pantargia, and a papal bull of Urban II named it the next year.
  • Near the Filiporto entrance lies a Byzantine-era village of about 150 rock-cut dwellings around the cliff-edge chapel of San Micidiario, where a faint Christ Pantocrator survives.
  • A large defensive ditch cut into the rock at Filiporto probably dates to Greek times and may be linked to the policies of Dionysius I of Syracuse.
  • In 1558 the Sicilian historian Tommaso Fazello identified Pantalica, wrongly, with the ancient town of Herbessus.
  • In the early 20th century a railway ran along the Anapo valley through the site, complete with a station named after the necropolis, until it closed in the 1950s.
  • The Sicilian writer Vincenzo Consolo named his collection of stories Le pietre di Pantalica, "The Stones of Pantalica", after the site.

Why it is worth it

In the limestone gorges of southeastern Sicily, thousands of small rectangular openings honeycomb the cliffs like the cells of a vast hive. Each is the mouth of a tomb cut into the rock between roughly the thirteenth and the seventh centuries BC. Pantalica was long thought to hold more than 5,000 such chambers; recent counts put the figure at just under 4,000, still enough to make it one of the largest rock-cut cemeteries in the Mediterranean. The setting is as striking as the tombs: a high plateau almost surrounded by the deep valleys of the Anapo and Calcinara rivers, thick with vegetation along the valley floors.

The necropolis served a community that flourished on the plateau from about 1250 to 650 BC, during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, before and during the first Greek settlement of Sicily. The tombs are grouped into five main cemeteries, known as Filiporto, North West, Cavetta, North and South, and their date shifts from one area to another. On the summit stand the foundations of the so-called Anaktoron, or prince's palace, a multi-roomed building of large stone blocks whose date is debated: some see it as a Late Bronze Age residence inspired by the palaces of the Bronze Age Aegean, others as much later. Some archaeologists link the settlement with Hybla, the realm of a Sicel king called Hyblon in ancient tradition.

Long after the prehistoric town was abandoned, the cliffs were inhabited again. Rock-cut houses, often attributed to the Byzantine period, were carved among the tombs, and three small medieval chapels hollowed out of the rock still keep traces of frescoes, evidence of little monastic communities living in the gorge. Most of what is known about Pantalica comes from the excavations of the archaeologist Paolo Orsi between 1895 and 1910, and the objects he recovered are now in Syracuse. In 2005 Pantalica was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List together with the city of Syracuse, and the gorge is protected as the Pantalica nature reserve.

Getting there

Pantalica lies in the Province of Syracuse, between the towns of Sortino and Ferla, each with its own approach road to the plateau. The nearest larger town is Lentini, about 17 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Catania-Fontanarossa (CTA), about 38 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Sicily 25The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Sicily 5The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Sicily 5The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Sicily 6The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Cemeteries 6The Most Beautiful Cemeteries in Italy 7The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites in Italy 7The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Sicily 8The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Necropolises 9The Most Mystical Cemeteries 10The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders in Italy 10The Most Mystical Archaeological Sites 11The Most Mystical Archaeological Wonders in Italy 11The Most Mystical Sacred Places in Italy 14The Most Remarkable Necropolises 18The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Italy 22The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places in Italy 22The Most Mystical Places in Italy 25The Most Beautiful Cemeteries 26The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Italy 36The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy 44The Most Mystical Sacred Places 49The Most Mystical Archaeological Wonders 73The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Italy 83The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites 114The Most Mystical Places 138The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders 149The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Sacred Places 179The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Necropolis of Pantalica is a collection of cemeteries with rock-cut chamber tombs in southeast Sicily, Italy. Dating from the 13th to the 7th centuries BC, it was thought that the site held over 5,000 tombs, although the most recent estimate suggests a figure of just under 4,000. They extend around the flanks of a large promontory located at the junction of the Anapo river with its tributary, the Calcinara, about 23 km (14 mi) northwest of Syracuse. Together with the city of Syracuse, Pantalica was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

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