Summit of Mount Triona
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🎧 STAGE 10 – THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT TRIONA: BETWEEN WATERS, GOLD AND ANCIENT MEMORY
We have reached the culmination of our journey: the summit of Mount Triona. In addition to dominating the surrounding landscape from above, this peak is loaded with suggestions and mysteries. An ancient popular belief has it that Mount Triona is half full of water and half full of gold. A legend that reflects, in a symbolic key, the duality between natural and spiritual wealth, between the sap of life and the hidden treasure of ancient knowledge.
From a naturalistic point of view, the mountain is an ecosystem rich in biodiversity. Numerous medicinal herbs still grow wild here and have been used over the centuries in folk medicine, such as sage, rosemary, wild fennel and St. John’s Wort, harvested at dawn by local healers and made into decoctions, infusions and ointments accompanied by ritual formulas, passed down orally from generation to generation.
Another element of great interest is the presence of ancient neviere: large pits dug into the rock or built of masonry, used to store snow during the winter and then transport it to the plains in the summer months. These structures testify to a mountain economy attentive to the enhancement of natural resources.
But Mount Triona is not only nature and legend. Archaeological excavations conducted in the summit part of the relief have uncovered the remains of an ancient settlement: dry stone walls, tracks of huts and housing structures, suggesting the presence of a stable or seasonal settlement. The most significant finds include impasto pottery from the Protohistoric period and black glazed pottery from the Hellenistic period. Some decorated sherds testify to commercial and cultural contacts with other Sicilian and Mediterranean centers.
More recent archaeological campaigns have also revealed fragments of amphorae, remains of hearths and domestic utensils, elements that indicate the use of the site even in Roman and Late Antique times. The strategic location of the mount, with wide views over the entire Sican territory, made it a natural checkpoint and probably also a ritual site. There was probably an indigenous community on Mount Triona that predates all the settlements found in the Sicani mountains.
The summit, then, proves to be a place dense with meaning: keeper of collective memory, witness to ancient knowledge and bridge between man and nature. Climbing up here is not just a physical act: it is an immersion in the depths of time, where the breath of the wind still carries with it the voices of past generations.
