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From the Sican reign of King
Kokalos to the county of the Peralta family (13th century BC
– 14th century AD), Caltabellotta, one of the most ancient
towns of Sicily, lies on mount Kratas, in the southern
section of the Sican Mountains. Its unique strong position
on the mountain has made it a significant and strategic
place for over two thousand years, throughout which
Caltabellotta has been the protagonist of the history of a
territory that goes from the river Belice to the river
Platani. Fought over, dominated, sacked and destroyed by the
peoples that occupied Sicily in the subsequent ages,
Caltabellotta has always managed to survive and regenerate
itself, sometimes changing its location and even its name.
Two caves, located on the summit of Mount S. Pellegrino,
bring us back to the prehistoric origins of Caltabellotta.
The four necropolises that surround the town bear witness of
a Sican presence back to the ancient Bronze age. The first
settlement on the nearby Mount Gulča dates back to the
protohistoric age; then it extended to the adjacent S.
Benedetto terrace first, and to the nearby villages later,
generating the town of Inycon. Initially the acropolis was
founded on top of Mount Gulča, but the royal site was moved
around the 13th century BC to the nearby rock called Camico,
today Gogāla, the eponym of its illustrious king Kokalos.
The town, which became legendary for resisting a siege which
lasted five years, is today listed among the most famous
acropolises of ancient times, together with the contemporary
Mycene, Pergamon of Troy and Cadmea of Thebes. In the 6th
century BC, Caltabellotta achieved a high development level
but, after its Hellenization, it had to change its Sican
name Inycon, recalled by Herodotus and Plato for the last
time (5th century BC), into the Greek name Triokala,
mentioned for the first time by Philistus of Syracuse (5th
century BC). The new place-name was the synthesis of three
beneficial properties: abundance of water, fertility of the
soil and a strong defence system (Diodorus). In 258 BC,
during the first Punic war, the town was destroyed by the
Romans. However, unlike all the other Sicilian fortified
settlements whose memory has been lost, Triokala had a
revival because its inhabitants refounded Trokalis (the New
Triokala) in the vicinity of the village of Sant’Anna, today
called Contrada Troccoli. The history of Gogāla had the same
course of the old town, but its history did not finish in
the 3rd century BC because it was later called to witness
more extraordinary events. During the Second Servile War
(104-99 BC), the slaves’ leader, Salvius Tryphon, decided to
avoid the town as he thought it was a cause of inertia and
sloth (Diodorus), and with his men settled on the San
Benedetto terrace and Gogāla rock, giving a new life to the
town destroyed by the Romans. This lasted for only five
years, because the clash was concluded with the defeat of
the insurgents. The thousand surviving slaves were led to
Rome in chains by Satirus and preferred suicide rather than
fighting against the wild beasts in the arena, thus marking
an important page of history with their sacrifice. Under the
Roman rule first and the Byzantine rule later, Trokalis had
to live as a tributary town for over ten centuries. With the
triumph of Christianity, the settlement became the seat of a
Sicilian diocese, whose borders were once again marked by
the rivers Platani and Belice. The story goes that its first
bishop was San Pellegrino, who had come from Lucca of Greece.
In the 9th century AD, the population, threatened by Saracen
raids, was forced to go back again on Mount Kratas top,
where a new settlement was founded in a corner of the Gogala,
today called Terravecchia, and was called Balateta (R.
Pirro). When the Arabs arrived (860-1091), the village
adopted the name Qalat al Balat, which meant fortress built
on the balate, the way the local flat stones were called (Edrisi),
and from which today’s name Caltabellotta derives. The
Muslims were chased away by Count Roger in 1091 and moved to
the nearby Sciacca, where they settled in a neighbourhood
that is still called Rābato. The Arabs were followed by the
Normans who closed the access way to Qalat al Balat with a
city wall and two gates (Salvo Porto and San Salvatore). The
Normans remained until December 29, 1194, when William III,
the last heir to the Norman throne, and his mother, Queen
Sibyl, were taken by fraud from the Castle of Caltabellotta,
where they had took refuge, and were accused to have plotted
against Henry VI of Swabia, were arrested and led to Germany
as prisoners. This event inspired Wolfram von Eschenbach at
mid 1200… the castle of Caltabellotta in his Parsifal. The
Normans were replaced by the Swabian dynasty. The return of
Guy d’Ampierre from the crusade led by the French king Louis
IX was celebrated in the same castle in 1270 with a rich
banquet whose noble participants were cheered up by the most
renowned minstrel of the time, Adam le Roi. When the Vespro
Revolution burst out (March 31, 1282), Caltabellotta
followed the example of the Palermitans. The war between
Angevins and Aragonese ended on August 29, 1302 with a peace
treaty signed in Caltabellotta and Frederick III of Aragon
who had come to help the Sicilians became king of Sicily
with the title of Frederick II. The Spanish domination
marked a period of decadence of the central political and
administrative role of Caltabellotta and its territory was
divided into counties. In 1338, by will of the king, Peter
II of Aragon, the Admiral of the reign, Raimondo Peralta,
was designated as the first count of Caltabellotta. In the
summer 1400, after the marriage between Artale de Luna and
Margherita Peralta Chiaramonte, the daughter of William, the
county passed under the Luna family, who received the lands
and castles of Bivona, Cristia, Giuliana, Poggio Diana and
Sciacca as dowry.
The Spanish remained until 1713, when Sicily was assigned ot
the Piedmontese Amadeus II and, after a short period of
Austrian rule, in 1734 it was annexed to the Borbone reign
of Naples. The rest of its history is recent. Obviously,
today Caltabellotta no longer holds the political and
administrative power it had once as a capital city of the
Sican reign of Kokalos, but it has preserved the privilege
of (virtually) ruling all the surrounding towns from the top
of its Castello Luna (the Luna Castle). In summer nights,
the lights from all these villages and towns mark the border
of the entire area where once massive castles rose. Today,
what remains is its wonderful position, at about 900 meters
of altitude, with a valley sloping down towards the coast,
as a European observatory on Africa. “The extraordinary
aerial beauty of Caltabellotta”, as W. Goethe wrote. This
enchanting town that cuddles the stars lies at the same
latitude as Tunis: it is sometimes covered with snow in the
winter or is wrapped up in a thick fog, but the sun makes it
always look as a charming fresh and ventilated town at only
20 km from the African sea. Its historic centre consists in
a network of small Medieval streets, yards and squares with
many signs of its Arab past and houses that, after fine
restoration works, are the ideal place for a long stay, made
even more pleasant by the friendliness of its residents, by
the genuine goodness of its products, by the richness of its
cultural and entertainment events.
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