THERE is no more moving place in Sicily than Pantalica, a vast necropolis with a total of over 5,000 tombs carved into towering cliffs above the river Anapo and its tributary, the Torrente Cava Grande. Although accessible from both Sortino and Ferla, the gorge has not been compromised by development. So we are left to our thoughts as we follow ancient tracks or flights of steps and clamber up to the least inaccessible of the gaping doors framing dark shadows that are cut into the pale rock. The individual tombs are of little visual interest. It is the concentrations of these, grouped as the configuration of the cliffs dictated, that draw us on. Wind, the sounds of birds, and drifts of wild flowers play their part, and we can only wonder at the laconic account of Douglas Sladen in his Sicily: The New Winter Resort (1905): ‘A gorge full of prehistoric tombs and with remains of a megalithic building and troglodytes’ caves. Explored thoroughly by Prof. Orsi. Near Sortino, which has a mail vettura from Syracuse.’
The best approach is from Ferla with its quartet of fine churches. The road strikes eastwards. Pass the visitor centre and drive on to a point where the road crests the ridge between the two valleys. Just before a bend to the left the ground falls away steeply to the Anapo on the right. Just below the road, cut into successive strata of a natural amphitheatre, is the Filiporto Necropolis, with roughly a thousand tombs datable to the ninth and eighth centuries BC. Further on, to the left of the road, are the upper sections of the earlier (twelth–eleventh centuries BC) North-west Necropolis, cut into outcrops hanging above the gorge of the Cava Grande; the majority of the tombs seem to have served for individual families. The road ends above the Anapo. A footpath cuts down to the left towards a partly rock-cut ancient road that curls down past scattered tombs to a ford across the Cava Grande; part of the original drain survives. There are more clusters of tombs, outliers of the North Necropolis, on the opposite bank, from which a well-preserved stairway cuts down to the Grotto dei Pipistrelli (Cave of the Bats) and implies the importance this had for the ancients. The path winds upwards towards Sortino. Return to the road and drive back for roughly a kilometre. A marked track to the left leads to the foundations of the so-called Anactoron on the crest of the plateau. From this a path above the gorge continues westwards, passing the troglodyte Byzantine settlement of San Micidiario to reach the road above the Filiporto Necropolis. A little below the Anactoron a steep path descends to the valley floor opposite the South Necropolis. The tombs of this, as of the South-west Necropolis and the Filiporto Necropolis across the gorge to the west, both most easily seen from the line of the former railway, are of the ninth and eighth centuries.
Tombs in the Filiporto Necropolis.
North-west Necropolis.
Protected as this was by the cliffs below, the high ground round the Ancatoron lent itself to defence. It was apparently first settled by an indigenous people in the thirteenth century BC. The Anactoron itself has been compared with Mycenaean buildings. And it is hardly surprising that the place has been associated with the early city of Hybla, the name of which would survive in that of the Megaran colony of Megara Hyblaea on the coast, which was founded in about 728 BC. Whatever its name, the city that must once have controlled a considerable territory suffered a gradual decline even before the arrival of the Megarans and the colonists from Corinth who settled at Syracuse a few years earlier. As the finds from the site now in the Museo Archeologico at Syracuse demonstrate, Pantalica was the centre of a sophisticated polity in the late Bronze Age. Looking up at the irregular tiers of the tombs, we can only speculate as to the causes of the city’s decay.
Steps to the Cava degli Pipistrelli.
