Petralia Soprana

Quiet and ancient town, founded by the Sicans or the Greeks, we have news of it at least from the third century BC, when it passed from the Carthaginian dominion to the Roman one , it is located at an altitude of almost 1150 m (it is the highest village in the Parco delle Madonie ), on a ledge of a plateau covered with woods, and has maintained the characteristic and suggestive medieval urban layout, with sinuous alleys flanked by churches and noble palaces and flowery internal courtyards.

What see

Here was born the artist fra Umile da Petralia whose painted wooden crucifixes are scattered in churches throughout southern Italy: the first one sculpted by him is kept in the ancient Mother Church of SS. Pietro e Paolo , located in Piazza Duomo , in the northern part of the town, rebuilt in the fourteenth century and enlarged in the eighteenth century.

In the southern part, higher than the town, past the suggestive Piazza San Michele with its Renaissance church and then Piazza Loreto , dominated by the eighteenth-century church of Santa Maria di Loreto , flanked by two elegant bell towers.

Passing under an ancient arch you arrive at the Belvedere terrace , one of the numerous terraces on the edge of the town from which you can admire vast views of the Madonie , Nebrodi and the indistinct conical shape of Etna .