Mount Bonifato

Territory

Mount Bonifato is located in the hinterland of gulf of Castellammare, between the valley of Fiume Freddo (a river on the west) and Fiume Jato (a river on the east).

It shows quite steep faces on the south, while the declivity is more gradual in the northern part of the mountain, in proximity of Alcamo.

Until the first decades of the 19th century the mountain was covered with an oak wood of ilex and downy oak. In the thirties they began a massive reforestation prevalently with Aleppo pine that is the prevailing essence nowadays. The access to the mount and the nature reserve is provided by a town street: via per monte Bonifato. Along this road there is a large number of holiday houses, especially concentrated between the fourth and fifth hairpin bend from the valley floor, and it is illuminated for a large part of its course (with the exception of the last mile, before the entrance into the reserve area).

From the peak you can admire a landscape with the mountains of Palermo on the east and the island of Marettimo in the west; on clearer days you can also see Ustica in the north and mount Cammarata in the south-east.

Geology

The stratigraphy of mount Bonifato is quite complex as this mountain is made up of many layers of rock, dating back to geological periods. They have found, in particular, the following formations:

From the hydrogeological point of view, there are a deep aquifer in correspondence with the Triassic limestones, a superficial one near the peak and secondary aquifers in correspondence with the layers of debris.

Paleontology

Between the mountain and Alcamo there is an imposing bank of travertine dating back to Pleistocene which has been exploited nearly all to get slabs for the building industry. The quarries are also an important site for palaeontology because they have found important fossils there.

In particular inside one of these quarries (called "Cava dei Cappuccini"), they have found remains (a natural cast of the brain, defences and molar teeth) of the dwarf elephant (Elephas falconeri), the spheric eggs and the fossilized armour of a big tortoise (Geochelone sp.). These last two fossil findings are kept at Museo paleontologico e geologico "Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro" of Palermo. The site has also allowed to re-establish the correct "stratigraphy" of the Elephas in Sicily because, in a fracture of travertine filled with ancient soil (more recently than travertine itself), they have found the remains of a medium size elephant, the Elephas mnaidriensis, which had been wrongly considered the dwarf elephant's ancestor.

Inside Alcamo travertine they also discovered specimens of giant dormouse, Cervus elaphus and Sus scrofa, hosted at the Civic Museum of Prehistory "Torre di Lignì" in Trapani.

Alcamo travertine quarry, where they have found different remains of palaeontological importance, has been menaced by a project for the construction of an amphitheatre whose works were assigned in June 2014, and modified afterwards (in November 2014) so that this palaeontological site will be partly protected.

Origins

In ancient times on Mount Bonifato there was a fortified town, testified by the different findings they have discovered. Along the centuries this town has passed through several phases of peopling and depopulation and for a long time it was inhabited contemporaneously with Alcamo (which is on the slopes of the mountain), before its disappearing. In particular, it was inhabited since the late Bronze Age and Elymians, Romans and Byzantines settled there.

From the quotations by Licofrone, we know that this town was formerly called Longuro. With the same name they also named the mountain, which according to other suppositions, was called "Aereo" and "Longarico", too (corresponding to the Latin name of Longuro).

The old town was defended by walls on three sides and was composed by unicellular houses (that is with a single room).

Among the remains of the old town there is Funtanazza, an ancient architectural work which people think had the function of a water supply infrastructure; according to others, it was instead a thermal plant. The Funtanazza has a rectangular plan with pillars supporting a barrel vault, similar to the Moorish fountains of the northern coasts of Africa.

Medieval period

It dates back to 1182 a document concerning the land concessions where this town is called "Bonifato" (or Bùnifat or Bonifacio), by the name of the Roman knight who became its owner.

In 1243 there is a depopulation event due to an order by Frederick II after some cases of rebellion. It was peopled again in 1333 under the nomination of Frederick III. Since 1340 it was a possession of the baron Raimondo Peralta and afterwards of Guarnieri Ventimiglia.

The inheritor of Guarnieri Ventimiglia was his son Enrico Ventimiglia, who declared to have built the castle on mount Bonifato as a protection from any attack. According to different opinions, the castle would date back to a preceding age.

The castle was destroyed in 1243 by order of Frederick II of Swabia, and then rebuilt before 1391 by the Ventimiglia family at their own expenses.

Bonifato was definitely abandoned in 1338: finally its inhabitants settled in Alcamo because of the difficulties to enter it and the distance from the road network.

In 1779 the ruins of the castle were included in the “Piano di conservazione dei Beni Culturali della Sicilia” by Gabriele Lancillotto Castello, Prince of Torremuzza.

Archaeological research

Since the second half of the 16th century Mount Bonifato has already been explored by scholars who identified various sites of archaeological interest on it, such as the ruins of the ancient village, which were found by the scholar Tommaso Fazello.

The archaeological remains on Mount Bonifato were a subject of research for the historians Ignazio de Blasi (18th century) and Vincenzo di Giovanni (19th century). At the Museo archeologico regionale Antonio Salinas, they have also exhibited oil lamps and stamps of bricks of the Roman age, picked up by Pietro Maria Rocca during the 19th century on Mount Bonifato.

Later they have made various archaeological excavations on this mount, discovering findings dating back to Middle Ages and remains of very ancient settlements, among them a house dating back to the 6th-7th century B.C. and ceramic and bronze fragments of pottery which are exhibited at museum Baglio Anselmi of Marsala.

Since the first archaeological excavations on Mount Bonifato they have found furnace graves that, however, did not contain any findings because they had been reused by local farmers in subsequent periods.

During the following excavations they have discovered the ruins of an ancient gate, called "Porta della Regina" ("the Queen's Gate").

The last excavations have been conducted during educational summer camps organized by Legambiente (1996), the Archeoclub of Trapani-Erice (2000), LIPU (2001) and Gruppo Archeologico Drepanon (since 2007 until 2010, inside the action named "Progetto Bunifat").

Sanctuary of the Most Holy Mary from the Height

The Sanctuary of the Most Holy Mary from the Height was built in the 16th century by the friars Antonino La Melodia, Vito Faraci and Giuseppe La Chelba, after the founding of an icon of a previous period (later missing) which had been buried under the walls.

In the same century of its construction, the church was object of pilgrimage (called "Sacred Streets") by the believers who went to the sanctuary for penance or to get the arrival of rains.

The church was then rebuilt in 1930. Inside it there are a wooden statue made in 1933 by Giuseppe Ospedale and a painting on sheet metal realized by Liborio Mirabile.

On 8 September there are the celebrations in honour of the Madonna dell'Alto and they include the preparation of great bonfires or "luminari" (on the eve), the saying of masses, the procession and the recitation of dialectal poems.

Man's intervention

Due to the activity of reforestation and the installation of TV repeaters (one of them even placed on one of the three towers of the castle), many marks of the past on Mount Bonifato have disappeared, for instance:

Sport events

On Mount Bonifato 13 editions of a car time trial have taken place and its finishing line was put in the large square near Funtanazza. This sport event has been resumed, after some years, in 2010.

On this mountain there were also some cycling competitions, among which the third Gran Prix of cycling of the Province of Trapani (2012).