The Cuba delle Rose is an Arab cistern about a thousand years old, some three hundred metres from the north-west side of Calatubo castle, in the countryside of Alcamo. The name may come from the Arabic qubbah, Sicilian cubba, the dome covering a reservoir or spring. It is a square building with a dome-like roof, like the dammusi, and it still collects water from a nearby spring.
What to see
It was the water supply for the inhabitants of the medieval village of Calatubo: the spring water arrived through channels with the same function as Persian qanats, a system of conduits that used gradients to bring the water back up into the reservoir. The fountain has an inner chamber holding the water, connected to an outer basin that served as a trough for large animals and once spilled its overflow into other small troughs, now lost.
The troughs were built after Calatubo was depopulated, when Frederick II forced the Muslim farmers to flee. According to old accounts, a garden and a palm grove surrounded the Cuba; the Arab-style garden was rectangular, walled, divided into four parts and crossed by channels, with a fountain in the centre.
Visiting
The Cuba has been restored with funds from the GAL Golfo di Castellammare and the municipality of Alcamo, to bring it back into use and open it to visitors; since then it has drawn tourists. Access and conditions should be checked, together with a visit to nearby Calatubo castle.
Our editors' tip
One of the legends linked to the Cuba tells that in the early eighteenth century this was the rose garden of Donna Gaetana De Ballis, last baroness of Calatubo, whose roses, it is said, bloomed only at night and in her presence, and stopped blooming when she died in 1769.
