Archaeology and nature: hyblean cultural landscape and territorial ...

Over the years, and with the exponential growth of mining industry, the building became the headquarters of
the mine until its definitive closure. Following its sale, the building has long been abandoned. Because of its
poor conditions, urgent consolidation works have been recently carried out, looking forward to finally be
restored to one day be transformed in a museum of industrial archeology. Worth mentioning are also water
catchment system structures situated therein, the millstone of the Pennisi's family and the so-called via del
mosto: a trail, originally built for the purpose of enabling a quick connection between the winery and the
Palace, flanked by an ancient gutter made by Sicilian tiles who brought the must to fall directly into the
cellars.
4. Prospects for the future
Floristella was one of the last Sicilian mines to close the door in the late 1980s. The abandonment of
structures, however suddenly happened, led to a period of great destruction, vandalism and theft that have
largely compromised an unique heritage, consisting of buildings, equipments, warehouse stock, often
irreversibly damaged or disappeared. To overcome these problems, unfortunately common to all Sicilian
sulfur mines, regional government promulgated on May 15, 1991 the law n. 17 that established in this area,
the Ente Parco Minerario (Park Mining Authority) in order to defend and protect the natural and human
landscape. By taking appropriate safeguard measures, this tool would be able to stop the degradation of this
rich set of cultural assets. Nevertheless, despite the commitment of its administrators, it has not allowed to
completely prevent the rapid destruction and decay processes that characterize today a large part of the
former mining site. If a number of "recovery, protection and restoration" actions were executed in the Park,
and as much are foreseen (waiting for funding), an objective data is source of concern: the almost total
indifference of the local population who do not know, do not understand it and/or it does not recognize itself
in this place. In part, privately owned and difficult to reach due to the absence of practicable roads and to the
presence of fences, the goods of this important industrial heritage, now fragmented, seem to move towards
the complete annihilation and with them the memory of the place and people who have populated it. Not
taking advantage of special attention from architectural critics or the interest of younger generations, this site
lies unexplored and isolated, although it deserve to be recovered.
In recent years there has however been an increasing interest in the requalification and valorization of the
Sicilian dismissed sulfur mines, which occurred mainly at the institutional level. This renewed attention is now
accompanied by the possibility of developing reasoned and concrete actions of protection and promotion.
They would certainly be helped by the presence of the Parco nazionale geominerario delle Zolfare di Sicilia
that a regional bill proposes to establish. This initiative aims at strengthening the provisions ensuring the
defense of the extraordinary industrial heritage of Sicily and to implement that "subsidiarity" principle that
appears necessary to allow the enhancement of the specific cultural, economic, historical and natural values
of the social and territorial realities involved.
In Italy, the experience of Geoparks has now reached a good level of maturity, in particular, with the creation
of the Geo-mining Historical Environmental Park of Sardinia and the implementation of other important
initiatives that merit to be studied and investigated. The meaning and the cultural contents of these realities
are by now concrete matters of record which a proper management policy of the historico-morphological
resources of the territory would necessarily refer to. They reflect an interest no longer being limited to the
respect and recognition of the natural values but that is part of the broader concept of "cultural heritage". To
the deep meaning of nature to be preserved is thus added the need to also consider the value of human
presence and that of all the signs of working activities and land transformation connected to it. In this
context, the concept of cultural heritage has gradually freed from the aesthetic values to include today the
social aspects, even the intangible or virtual ones, once considered exclusively the subject of specific and
exclusive studies [10; 11]. This should not be understood as a new complication, but, on the contrary, the
testimony of a broader and generalized awareness of the meaning of human presence, of the role of the
work, which could become a powerful catalyst capable of triggering processes of growth and improvement of
the quality of life in the concerned places.
The establishment of the Parco nazionale geominerario delle Zolfare di Sicilia is part of this worship process
and is focused on the idea to create a museo diffuso, a kind of extended museum at regional scale, really
considering the whole island as such, seeking at improving natural and ethno-anthropological qualities.
Will this project (clearly top-down based) achieve the results aimed by Politics? Will it succeed in facilitating
the rediscovery of that authentic local culture that is needed in order to preserve and affirm people's identity
and to highlight the differences for the purposes of an overall socio-economic development?
Probably not, unless of first rebuild the "reasons" of such settlements, giving them a "sense", at present lost.
This, in the conviction that only what is understood and of what are known the true motives and
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