Floristella Grottacalda Mining Park

The park is not far from Enna and you can get there from Pergusa along the state road SS 117bis and taking the left turn at Portella Grottacalda, towards Valguarnera Caropepe. The Floristella Park, named after two sulphur mines active from the late 18th century until 1987, is an open-air museum and one of the best examples of industrial archaeology in Southern Italy. A visit to the park isn't exactly a short walk, but it's well worth doing for the fascinating insight into the world of sulphur mining in Sicily over the centuries. On the 400 hectares of rocky and shadowy terrain, you can still see the service buildings used by the miners, the smelting furnaces used to separate the sulphur from the ground rock, the tight passageways through which the miners would reach the sulphur deposits in pre-industrial times as well as the pit shafts and mine workings, which remained in use until a few decades ago.