Roccamena: an 18th-century village above the Belice valley

Roccamena owes its very name to a moment of delight. When the Sicilian nobleman Giuseppe Beccadelli di Bologna, Prince of Camporeale, first looked out over this rocky hill in the Palermo hinterland, he is said to have exclaimed "Che rocca amena!", what a pleasant rock. Around 1796 he founded a village here on a neat grid plan, and it remains one of the youngest towns in Sicily.

How the village grew

The first houses, once a cluster known as "the four houses" serving the surrounding estates, climbed the hill in an orderly chequerboard that survives today. The mother church of the Santissimo Salvatore dates from 1840, and the patron saint, Joseph, is honoured each summer with a traditional sacred play.

Melons, Maranfusa and Lake Garcia

Roughly 1,500 people live by farming, and Roccamena is proud of its white "purceddu" melon, celebrated at a lively melon festival. The real draws, though, lie just outside the town: the archaeological site of Monte Maranfusa, where excavations have uncovered indigenous settlements occupied between the 9th and 6th centuries BC, the medieval Calatrasi bridge with its old mill, and the broad waters of Lake Garcia on the river Belice.

Getting there

The village stands at about 480 metres roughly thirty-five kilometres south-west of Palermo, reached from the Palermo-Sciacca road.