ARAGONA
Aragona is a small town of approximately 10,000 people situated in a hilly area, 482 metres above sea level. The town is located in the middle of sulphur fields that today are no longer mined, but that in the past were very productive. The town was founded in the early 1600 by the will of the Count of Comiso, Baldassare Naselli. After obtaining from Phillip III the right to populate his feud of Diesi, in 1606, he ordered to build the first houses and named the small hamlet after his mother, Beatrice Tagliavia d'Aragona Branciforti. Soon, the town became a principality, and the Nasellis, who remained owners of the town until 1800, built the majestic Palazzo Principe as a symbol of their prestige. In the old centre of this small town, besides the strolls through the narrow alleys and its suggestive small squares, the major artistic attractions are the various churches that preserve some precious artworks, like inside the church of SS. Rosario, which features a beautiful silver urn commissioned by the Prince Baldassare Naselli, to hold the relics of the Holy Shroud. Few kilometres south of town, we find the Macalube Natural Reserve, one of the most interesting reserves in the world thanks to some rare geological phenomena of sedimentary volcanism. As for the town’s culinary tradition, the unmissable festival of the “Tagánu” represents the major appointment with the town’s popular tradition.
