Avola

The name comes from Hybla, and Hybla is not Greek: it is pre-Hellenic, probably Sicanian, and it was the name of a goddess worshipped by Sicani and Siculi alike, whom the Greeks ended up identifying with Aphrodite. The old town stood on the Hyblaean hills, and on the eve of 1693 it must have had at least six thousand inhabitants. Then, on the ninth and eleventh of January that year, the earthquake that levelled half of eastern Sicily — Catania, Syracuse, Augusta — destroyed Avola too, and the survivors came down eight kilometres to an empty plain facing the sea and refounded it there. A mountain village became a seaside town because of an earthquake.

The rebuilding began at once, willed by prince Nicolò Pignatelli Aragona, who gave the design to father Angelo Italia, a Jesuit and an architect: what came out was a city on a centric plan with a hexagonal structure, a thing unique in Italy that can still be read from the squares. Avola then gave its name to two glories: nero d'Avola, the most famous red in Sicily, and the pizzuta almond, which pastry cooks compete for, for sugared almonds and for granita; and, less known, rum is made here too. On the second of December 1968 the farm labourers of Avola and its province blocked the main road during a strike against wage cages and the gangmaster system, and to obtain a union commission overseeing hiring: the police intervened. The golden sand promenade looks towards Capo Passero; behind, the reserve of Cavagrande del Cassibile opens canyons and pools for anyone who likes walking.