Giffarone Mine

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The Giffarò sulphur mine, also known as the Giffarò or Giffarone mine, stands in the countryside between Delia and Caltanissetta, within one of the sulphur basins that made 19th-century Sicily famous.

Miniera Giffarone

Active since 1831 with the traditional method of manual excavation, it was the only one to be converted into an open-pit mine starting in 1950, thanks to the shallow depth of the deposit, which allowed extraction without underground shafts.

After its closure, the waste material and gypsum walls formed an evocative elongated pond stretching North–South, now enlivened by riparian vegetation and surrounded by reeds and colonising shrubs. Visitors can still recognise, among heaps of debris, the traces of the calcarelle and the now-abandoned Gill furnaces.

Walking along the paths around the quarry, expert guides recount the stories of the carusi — the young workers who carried the ore along rudimentary descents — and the social and economic dynamics of the “sulphur rush”, inviting reflection on the relationship between industrial progress and human toil.

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