A few kilometres from Sciacca, Monte Kronio — also known as Monte San Calogero — hides a rarity: natural caves that breathe out hot vapour, the famous “stoves of San Calogero”. They are karst cavities used for healing since antiquity; legend says Daedalus dug them in the land of the Sicani. Inside the best-known, the temperature swings between 36 and 42 degrees, and seats and holes for inserting ailing limbs are still carved into the walls.
What to see
The hill, about 395 metres high and today a nature reserve, brings together three things at once. The stoves themselves: the main one is 9.4 metres long and was used against arthritis, rheumatism, gout and sciatica. The Antiquarium di Monte Kronio, set up in the 1980s, which gathers the finds from excavations in the caves. And the sanctuary of San Calogero, built in 1530 and raised to a minor basilica by John Paul II in 1979, which holds a statue of the saint carved by Antonello Gagini. All of it on a relief that may be an ancient volcano, as the sulphur vapours and the nearby island of Ferdinandea suggest.
Visiting
The Kronio caves are no mere thermal curiosity: in 2012, Copper Age jars from the fourth millennium BC were found in them, bearing traces of tartaric acid — some of the oldest evidence of winemaking in the world, six thousand years old. The area, run by the Superintendency of Agrigento, is reached from Sciacca in a few kilometres of climbing.
Our editors' tip
Before heading down, lean into one of the stoves: the hot vapour you feel is the same the ancients believed cured gout and rheumatism, and that made this hill a place of healing long before modern spas. A spot where geology, legend and archaeology keep overlapping.
