Zafferana Etnea

Zafferana Etnea(Zip Code 95019) is 215 Km. distant from Agrigento, 149 Km. from Caltanissetta, 23 Km. from Catania, which is the province it belongs to, 120 Km. from Enna, 72 Km. from Messina, 272 Km. from Palermo, 127 Km. from Ragusa, 81 Km. from Siracusa, 371 Km. from Trapani.

Copyright © 2000 Affinità Elettive

The municipality counts 8.029 inhabitants, its surface measures 7.612 hectares, and its population density counts 105 inhabitants per square kilometre. It rises over a mountain area, 600 meters above the sea.

The Town hall is located in via della Montagna, tel. ++39 095-7082217 fax. ++39 095-7083260.

Zafferana Etnea boasts an agricultural production based on the cultivation of wine grapes, fruit, and mushrooms.

Even the production of honey and its derived products is relevant, as well as the handcfraft activity consisting of ceramic and lava stone products.

Renown for the production of delicious honey, the town's name derives from the Arab term Zafaran, that means yellow, the color of the wild broom flowers, typical of the area, and color of the zapheran, very diffused in the surrounding forests.

Copyright © 2001 Affinità Elettive

There is little information regarding Zafferana Etnea: the inhabited center rose in the surroundings of the priorate of San Giacomo, in 1387.

The name "Zafarana", however, is mentioned for the first time in a document only in 1694. It became an indipendent town in 1816.

The most outstanding monuments are the Chiesa Madre preseving a pinting of San Giuseppe col Bambino by Giuseppe Sciuti (1834-1911), the Chiesa Madonna delle Grazie, the Dome dedicated to Santa Caterina D'Alessandria and the baronial Palazzo Pappalardo.

The most notorious inhabitant was the painter Giuseppe Sciuti (1834-1911), whose frescoes of the Chiesa Colleggiata, situated in Via Etnea, and the paintings exhibited in the halls of Catania's Town Hall, are famous.