Zafferana Etnea

Zafferana Etnea (9,286 inhabitants) is located 600 meters above sea level, on the eastern slopes of the volcano.

The actual history of the town originated with the founding of the Priory of St. James, a Benedictine monastery in the Middle Ages, of which you have some news from 1387, in a document signed by the Bishop of Catania Simone del Pozzo.

By a papal bull in 1443, we learn of the existence of an adjoining church dedicated to St. James, both sacramental and parish, which suggests that it was attended by a core group of people born around the monastery. The monastic life in the Priory ended in 1464, with the union to that of Sant’Agata La Vetere, but the church was opened for worship at least up to 1677, and was then probably destroyed, along with the entire complex, by the terrible earthquake of 1693.

The Priory was the beginning of the flare of the Valle San Giacomo, upstream of the modern town. The first name that is found in the history of Zafferana is “cell”, which indicated the same territory of St. James, where was located the priory.

In a document of 1694, however, appears for the first time the name “Zafarana” which will then give the village its name. The lands of the district Zafarana depended administratively by the municipalities of Trecastagni, Viagrande and Aci Sant’Antonio until 1826, and from the religious point of view of the village church, the Church of Our Lady of Providence, built in the early eighteenth century, it was bound to ‘Deanship parish “St. Nicholas of Bari” Trecastagni until the establishment of the parish in 1753.

On 21 September 1826 a decree of Francesco I ordered that the districts of Zafarana Etna, Sarro, Rocca d’Api, Bongiardo and Pisano formed, breaking away from the municipalities of Trecastagni, Viagrande and Aci SS. Anthony and Philip, a new town by the name of Zafarana Etna, then Zafferana Etnea.

The typical local product ‘par excellence’ is honey. Beekeeping is one of the most thriving occupations and has made the town one of the main national producers of honey. Quality wines are also very important many of them meriting a D.O.C. quality mark. Between November and May delicious mushrooms are picked in the woods of Zafferana.
In the rotisseries ask for the local speciality, ‘Pizza siciliana’, a half-circle closed pizza filled with ‘tuma’ cheese, anchovies and pepper and then fried.

Courtesy of the Provincia Regionale of Catania.