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The Saracens Caves

The “Grotte dei Saraceni” (Saracens Caves or “Grotte della Saracina” or, according to the historian B. Radice, “dei Giganti”) are one of the many traces of the existence of ancient peoples (probably the Sicani) who inhabited our lands.

There are spaces dug in the cliff, in an adjacent high sandstone cliff, alongside the Saracens River, a Simeto’s affluent that flows for few kilometres along the 120 state road. Probably they are of prehistoric origin, used in various ages, sometime as rooms and in some cases for military purposes.

The Arabs called the zone "Caves of the Flour", or of the Giants, where just in the vicinities, in 1040, they had been defeated, after a ferocious battle, by the Byzantine general George Maniace. This is what writes about these caves Benedict Radice in his Historical Memories of Bronte: «The Maniace caves that the Cavallari calls Caves of the Giants, and the people Saracens Caves, are also remarkable.

Of these caves, about a kilometre from the Abby, at the right of the Simeto river, the Cavallari had already given news to the Duke of Lugues believing to be very important. Also the Amari speaks of these caves as of a very ancient work indeed.

To these and those of Rocca Calanna the Holm points out: «Ancient caves, he writes, dug by man, can be found between Bronte and Maletto».

There are three caves: The one to the Rocca‘s feet is shaped as a corridor, two meters high, and a meter and a half wide.
The second, further up, is divided in two rooms with pillars dug all around. The third one is above; shaped nearly square with three lateral openings, facing South; it is eight metres long and six wide.

Rather than graves they must have been rooms for people living there: lookouts where, maybe, in the middle ages, from the sixth to the seventh century, rustic people, dedicated to agriculture and sheep farming, lived for the safety of the countryside; some sort of troglodytes, descending from the ancient Siculi, of which some semi-barbarian groups always remained.

The digging work is somewhat similar to the caves of the famous Sperlinga castle".

Other similar testimonies to the Saracens Caves, scattered in Bronte’s territory, are the ”burial little cells”, mostly small, where -  according to Radice - the corpses were crouched down, with hands stretched over the knees. They appear similar to the cells of the Pantalica necropolis, near Syracuse, rich of funeral furnishings, showing traits of the Sicani’s society of the second period”.

... The Bronte ones, more than to the Siculi should be attributed to the Sicani, first uncouth inhabitants of Sicily.

Interesting and remarkable are “the gruttitti” dug in the Rocca Calanna and the Contura, in the Primaria soprana, under the Colla, in Fontana­murata, Margiogrande, others in Placa Baiana and in Macchiafava.

At few kilometres from the Caves, nearly adjacent to the road 120, in district Balze-Man­giasarde, under Maletto can be found further traces of ancient settlings: there can be easily seen a boundary wall (winding for nearly two kilometres) including stone rooms rectangular o circular. They might go from the VI – V century B.C. up to the late Roman period, (III – IV century B.C.).

The amount of wall ruins, the perfect basement and raised realization, made with large lava stones, the proximity of other sites of archaeological interest (Tartaraci, Saracens Caves, Santa Venera, etc.) make of this spot an important reason of study and analysis of the Siculi people’s presence in our country side.

In the largest cave, the one located in the upper part of the rock (see photo next to the title), the erosion of atmospheric agents has partly modified the original configuration of the lateral openings. From the cliff you can dominate the wide valley of Maniace.

The limestone cliff where the three "Giants'" or "Saracens'" caves were dug in ancient times (one, in the photo below, is indicated by the arrow). The Saracena river that flows at the foot of the cliff, descends from the Nebrodi (from Lake Trearie, 1,420 m.) and a few kilometers later, after having lapped the walls of Nelson Castle, flows into the Simeto. In summer it is easily forded. The cave at the top (the third, for Radice) is the largest.

The Caves of the Giants

by Salvo Nibali

The locals know them by the name of “Saracina” but the Bronte scholar Benedetto Radice called them the “Cave of the Giants” while El Idrisi, the Arab geographer who lived during the reign of King Roger, had defined them as “Cave of Flour” due to the presence, nearby, of numerous water mills and identified them tout court with the well-populated village of Maniace, “fertile and abundant territory of every kind”.

The tuff rock in which, like blind orbits, they open is located near Maniace, on a bank of the Saraceno stream that further downstream laps the ancient Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria, better known as Castello Nelson, and looks at the natural terrace of the “Balzi”, the ancient lavas on which in the past ran the most exploited communication route for centuries to go from Messina to Catania or to reach, from the Ionian coast, Palermo.

The entire area from Bronte to Randazzo and up to the mountain of Bolo, from Rocca Calanna to Fontanamurata to Margiogrande, is rich in burial cells from the era generally defined as pre-Greek: small Pantaliche that never arouse, however, the reverential curiosity and religious fear that the “Grotte dei giganti” in Maniace produce.

Three of the four cells of the “Saracina” open onto the sides of the rock while a fourth, on the edge of the stream, is more of a corridor with traces of human work, a tunnel that still hides some mystery, if it is true that it went to open out on the diametrically opposite side, and that it is regularly flooded by water.

Of the others, the largest has a room of about 24 square meters and another is also approximately the same size, while the lowest, on the side of the hill, almost inaccessible, is noticeably smaller and does not have the shelves dug into the rock that the other two have.

In light of the clandestine excavations that have affected the area in recent years and considering that one of them has a typical Castelluccian tomb at the entrance, it can perhaps be said that the tuff pyramid of the “Saracina” hosted a burial ground for a few high-ranking figures in the pre-Hellenic era and that in the following centuries it became the most advanced part, a sort of watchtower, for the human nucleus that in the Greek era built a settlement defended by strong walls around this natural fortress.

It is a hypothesis that, in the absence of the necessary archaeological tests, arises spontaneously by examining the well-worked lava stone fortification sections that came to light a few years ago also due to soil erosion, together with numerous fragments of ceramic artefacts, right next to the limestone hill of the Grotte.

It is not excluded that these cells dug into the tuff, from the 9th to the 12th century, in the Middle Ages and after the liberation from Arab domination of Sicily, were inhabited by monks and hermits who were very widespread in this territory at that time.
In fact, no traces of a “grangia”, that is, a Basilian dependency located in this area, have ever been found, but some objects found by the so-called “tomb raiders” right inside one of the Maniace caves, including a small and beautiful bronze crucifix, also suggest a religious use of these cavities, as happened on a larger scale, from the first centuries of the Christian era onwards, for the rock churches of the Syracuse area. But these are hypotheses.

What has been necessary, for some time now, is instead a serious archaeological reconnaissance of this area, which among other things, is one of the most beautiful in the valley also from a naturalistic point of view.

From the “Grotte della Saracina” down to the banks of the upper course of the Simeto, where the good Radice had also identified the mosaics of a Roman villa, the Maniace valley is rich in buried treasures. And truths yet to be revealed.
 

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Translated by Sam Di Bella

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