The park of Madonie is one the most suggestive places of Sicily, especially if you love be surrounded by a naturalistic scenery. Another great advantage, it’s the possibilità to be close to the sea and the city of art, giving you the possibility of living a complete holiday.

Starting from Dimora dei Frati you can discover Pizzo Dipilo, a relief of the Madonie mountain group located in the territory of Isnello and Gratteri, the evocative Grattara cave, the grotto Dei Panni and the cave of Appesa. The Gratteri area is increasingly popular also for sports activities, both with quads and SoftAir players, so much to host regional championship stages.

Every year, Gratteri offers interesting ideas at any time of the year. During the Christmas period, for example, it is worth experiencing the Christmas holidays directly through the celebrations of “A Vecchia”. It is a mythical character similar to the Befana that in these parts is much more famous than Santa Claus and performs all its functions. Every year the municipality and the local realities organize tastings, dances, concerts and the inevitable fireworks, with the culmination into a big square party in the magical New Year’s night.

The end of the year event starts around 8.30 pm with the sound of the horn and cowbells, when “A Vecchia” begins the descent from the Grattara cave accompanied by a procession of boys. Around 9 pm, “A Vecchia”, on the back of a donkey and wrapped in her white sheet, goes through the narrow streets of the village, distributing gifts and sweets to all the children.

If you want to explore the park and discover the particular features, see more useful information:

Within the park, people and peoples have been moving since prehistoric times leaving numerous traces. The territory is marked by numerous religious buildings, monasteries, hermitages and rupestrian churches, often suggestively isolated high up in the mountains. Forgotten along the waterways the mills, the old farmhouses often built on the remains of more ancient Roman farmhouses, testify to the ability of a culture capable of living in symbiosis with nature.

In the Madonie Islands, which occupy just 2% of the island’s surface, there are over half of the Sicilian plant species among which several are endemic.

The area of ​​the Park of the Madonie is divided into three distinct areas: the coastal strip of the northern slope, protected by the African winds where the densest woods are found, the centuries-old olive groves, the cork oaks, the chestnut woods, the manna ash trees, the downy oaks and holly nuclei from Piano Pomo. The vast mountain range, on the other hand, preserves the woody mantle of holm oak and beech and presents numerous endemic species including the Abies Nebrodensis, relict of ancient glaciations.

It is materially impossible to draw up an exhaustive list of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates that inhabit this territory. Some data may, in some way, render an idea of ​​the entity – in terms of quantity and quality – of this heritage. The Madonie host all the species of mammals present in Sicily, about 70% of the birds that nest there and about 60% of the invertebrates of the island. Among these species many of which are typical of the place, the rare and protected species we mention only:

• Boar
• Daino
• Italic hare
• Western European hedgehog
• Red fox
• Diurnal butterflies

  The Park of Madonie is the perfect place for an escape faraway from the gray city environment and to taste the truest meaning of the word Sicily