Castiglione di Sicilia - Cuba di Santa Domenica

Castiglione di Sicilia is on the northern slopes of Mount Etna. In 710 BC the Greeks navigated the river. The area was founded in 496 BC. permanently settled. by displaced residents of Naxos. It was a Greek colony, later an Arab fortress and in the early Middle Ages a Norman city. Ancient tales tell that the Arabians once bred crocodiles in the Alcantara River.Castiglione di Sicilia reached its heyday after the expulsion of the Arabs by the Normans. In 1233 Frederick used the castle as a summer residence.

The Cuba di Santa Domenica is a rural chapel near Castiglione di Sicilia (in the backdrop). It was dated to the 7th-9th century and attributed to the Byzantine. A younger analysis allowed for a more reasonable chronological placement in the historical period between Islamic and Norman rule, i. H. between the 10th and 11th centuries.

After years of decay, the church underwent a restoration in the late 1990s- Two skeletons of uncertain date were found, which would suggest the presence of an adjoining rural cemetery.