Cinisi

Cinisi (Zip Code 90045) is 171 km. from Agrigento, 174 km. from Caltanissetta, 281 km. from Catania, 193 km. from Enna, 291 km. from Messina, 32 km. from Palermo, which province it belongs to, 315 km. from Ragusa, 339 km. from Siracusa, 75 km. from Trapani.

The municipality has 10.325 inhabitants and has an area that covers 3.316 hectares for a density of population of 311 inhabitants per square kilometre. It rises on a coast hilly area and is placed 75 metres above sea-level.

The Town Hall is in piazza Vittorio Orlando, tel. ++39 091-8664144 fax. 091-8699004.

It is an important agricultural centre and oliveyards. It produces some dairying products, in fact Cinisi is famous for the Festival of the buttermilk curds and dairying products which takes place in May.

Gins is the Arabic name of Cinisi and means ghosts, spirits and its inhabitants are called cinisensi. A country-house built according to arabic architecture was the first inhabited centre and dates back to the XI century. But only in the XVII century the oldest area of the town was founded by Benedectine friars who belonged to St. Martino delle Scale.
They built on the feudal village in their jurisdiction (since 1383) a court that during the times was rebuilt and restored. The architectonic mark of the external front of the court is clearly seventeenth-century taste so that it wants to restore a symbiosis between temporal and ecclesiastic authority. Now it houses the town office.

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The benedectine court with two sight-towers, Torre Pozzillo and Mulinazzo, are the most ancient buildings can be visited, because most rich of history. Important are also other monuments such as the Church of Sacramento of the XVIII century, the Sanctuary of the Madonna of the Furi, the Church of the Anime Sante, the Church and the Convent Santo Canale, both date back to the XIX century.

Cinisi was the muse of the renowned Sicilian poet Giovanni Meli, who has been in the small town between 1767 and 1772 to do his work as county doctor. There he composed some of his best lyrics looking at beautiful sea of Sicily that washes the coasts of cinisense coastal.