When Piero Orlandini began the first excavation campaigns on Monte Sabucina in the 1960s, he uncovered a Late Bronze Age village of huts, dating to the 13th-10th century BC — the first settlement of its kind ever identified in Sicily. The site sits eight kilometres north-east of Caltanissetta, commanding the Salso river valley, and holds traces of near-continuous occupation from the early Bronze Age to Roman times.
What to see
The core of the park is the cluster of circular huts of the northern Pantalica culture, partly cut into the rock and ringed by a low stone wall that once carried a timber frame; a hearth sits at the centre of each, and some were linked to underground hypogea. One hut served as a forge — stone moulds for casting metal weapons were found inside — alongside objects of Aegean origin that point to contact with the eastern Mediterranean. South of the fortifications lies the sacred area, a group of rectangular and circular rooms tied to the cult of chthonic deities, in use between the 8th and 5th century BC. It produced the celebrated Sacello of Sabucina, a 6th-century-BC terracotta model of a small temple with a pronaos in antis and a pitched roof, crowned by two horsemen and a tympanum bearing two gorgon masks. The city wall, raised when Greek colonists Hellenised the site in the 6th century BC, enclosed the summit with a circular tower; after Ducetius destroyed the settlement in the 5th century BC it was reinforced with square towers.
Visiting
Since 2001 the area has been a regional archaeological park. Its path runs through the successive phases of the settlement — from the Sican villages of the earliest inhabitants to the quarters rebuilt with rectangular towers — before the site was abandoned around 310 BC, probably at the hands of Agathocles of Syracuse. The Roman period left its mark too: a bust of the emperor Geta, dated to 204-5 AD, was found here, one of the few official portraits of him to survive his damnatio memoriae. The sacello and the finest finds are not on the mountain — they are kept in the Regional Archaeological Museum of Caltanissetta.
Our editors' tip
Treat the site and the museum as a single visit: walk the mountain first to read the sequence of huts and walls on the ground, then see the Sacello and its grave goods in Caltanissetta, where the objects made and buried here come back into focus. Wear sturdy shoes — the ground is steep and the whole site is covered on foot.