Opened in 1825 on the estate of Baron Morillo, the mine soon became one of the deepest sulphur mines on the island, with shafts reaching 270 meters and a narrow-gauge cableway linking it to the Imera station for shipment to European markets. The galleries carved into calcarenite and brackish clays yielded an extremely pure mineral, but at the cost of back-breaking labor in which the carusi - teenagers forced to carry thirty-kilo sacks on their backs - also took part. Historical records recall the harsh trade-union struggles of the early 20th century and a painful chronicle of tragedies: the firedamp explosion of 22 April 1863 that killed 82 miners, the fire of 1867 with another 30 victims suffocated by sulphur dioxide fumes, and the underground blaze of 20 October 1911 that burned for ten days, leaving 40 dead and 16 injured.
Despite the introduction of electric hoists, state-of-the-art Gill furnaces, and an external enrichment plant able to process residues from nearby mines, the international sulphur crisis and new chemical extraction techniques marked the decline of the site: production ceased officially in 1979, while some surface activities continued until 1986, when the machinery fell silent and prickly pears, broom, and caper plants reclaimed the waste heaps.
Today, climbing the dirt road from SP 202, visitors encounter the metal headframe, the hoist room, the remains of the miners’ village, and the darkened mouths of the shafts: a landscape suspended between industrial archaeology and nature, where blue celestine crystals still sparkle among the slag and a sulphurous wind seems to carry back the voices of those who once labored in the depths of the hill. Volunteers of the “Friends of the Mine” Association accompany small groups at sunset, when the yellow dust glows with golden flashes and the miners’ cemetery - iron and marble crosses swallowed by grass - reminds us of the human toll paid for modernity.
Visiting Trabonella means crossing, in just a few hundred meters, a century and a half of the economic, social, and geological history of inland Sicily: a silent tale of ingenuity and suffering, etched into the stones and mineral strata that still carry the scent of sulphur.