The Grotta di Carburangeli strict nature reserve is a protected area in the municipality of Carini, set up in 1995 and entrusted to the Sicilian regional committee of Legambiente. The cave lies in the coastal plain, near Villagrazia di Carini. It is a strict reserve: its purpose is to keep the environment as it is, for its speleological, palaeontological, biological and archaeological interest.
What to see
The cave is a cavity that runs almost entirely horizontally, about four hundred metres long and made up of several chambers. In the excavations of recent centuries, here and in the nearby cavities, many fossil remains have been found of animals extinct or vanished from Sicily: the elephant, the bear, the hyena, the bison and the deer.
A delicate fauna lives inside. There are bats of the species Myotis myotis and small organisms adapted to the dark, insects, crustaceans, spiders, millipedes and molluscs, which have modified sense organs, different life cycles and have often lost their colour.
Visiting
Access is regulated by the managing body, which monitors the climate parameters inside the cave so that visits are compatible with the fauna: arrangements, dates and bookings should be requested from the reserve.
Our editors' tip
The cave also interests archaeologists: as early as the nineteenth century the geologist Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro described it as a cave «ad ossame ed armi di pietra», that is, with animal bones and stone tools left by humans. Later the scholar Giovanni Mannino carried out palaeoethnological research there on the human presence.
