Necropolis of Pantalica (Sicily, Italy) - World Heritage Sites on Waymarking.com

If you are tired by crowded summer Syracuse with its ancient Greek architecture, leave the city and try to spend one day in beautiful limestone carst landscape filled by traces of old civilization... We recommend you head up Sortino or Ferla in the Iblei mountains and explore the "Rocky Necropolis of Pantalica", a part "Syracuse and the Rocky Necropolis of Pantalica" UNESCO Word Heritage Site, in our opinion more interesting that Syracuse... (especially for nature lovers!). Our coordinates show good parking place on the Pantalica plateau, where you can start exploration of the area and descent to the canyon.

Home to some 5000 burial chambers of considerable archaeological interest, Pantalica is also a place of great natural beauty, a deep limestone canyon carved out over millennia by the Anapo and Calcinara rivers. The steep sides of the gorge give way to a fertile valley that supports a flourishing variety of Mediterranean flora including holm oaks, wild sage and thyme, orchids from Ophrys and Orchis genera, giant fennel (Ferula) and plane-trees. The fauna is no less impressive and you might well see foxes, porcupines, hares, kingfishers, peregrine falcons and lot of beautiful butterflies.

The tombs themselves pepper the sides of the canyon and are an impressive sight. Built in two main periods between the 13th and the 8th Centuries BC, they are relatively small in size and either elliptical or rectangular in shape.

There are two main entrances to the valley, one from near Sortino, and the other from Ferla. The former involves a good walk down the sides of the gorge while the latter is more of a gentle stroll along a well-beaten path.

Whether you go out of archaeological interest or for the unspoilt natural beauty you will come away feeling that you’ve discovered something really special...