The Casale is well inserted into the rural architecture of the area, and easily reached from the new E45 Siracusa – Gela.  For its history, geographical position and the typical Mediterranean countryside with almonds, olives and vines in an uncontaminated setting it is ideally placed to become an important spot in the rural landscape.

The building, a typical Casale of the 1700’s, covers 1397mq, with an internal courtyard of over 800mq and surrounding land of 3.27.90 hectares.

The Casale has 3 ‘corpi’ around a central courtyard in the centre of which is the traditional ‘cisterna’ for water.

The entrance is a the south east side, at one time with a great arch in limestone,  which leads into the courtyard with the small limestone cobbles so beloved of the area.  On the southwest side is the chapel, attached to the exterior wall and adjacent to the padronal house.  On the north west side there is the palmento – 2 large spaces for storage.  And on the north east side the first door leads to a large storeroom added to the property at the beginning of the 1900’s,  Adjacent to this we find a long narrow space at double elevation with a ceiling ‘a botte’. The south east side is taken up with a body of buildings characterized by a series of six arches.

At the end of the south east wing, we find a part of the building rebuilt at the beginning of the 1900’s, composed of 2 spaces, one seems to have been a store of some kind, the other was a ‘kitchen’ with a wood burning  stove and seems to have been used for domestic use.    At the south west side, for the exclusive use of the baron, there was a terrace/belvedere which faced the sea and the surrounding countryside.

And this is the countryside which Gaetano Ganci set his celebrated romance ‘Portrait of the Manor’ in 1963.

The entire complex is built, of limestone with the castellations, typical of the fortified masserie of the zone.   The walls are between 50 and 70cm thick.  The pitched roofs have wooden beams, ‘canne e gesso’ with Sicilian tiles, with the exception of one room which has the vaulted ceilings.   The floors are made of either limestone blocks or pietra pece, and the storerooms have large stone slabs while the stalls and barns have the cobbles or ‘ciottoli’.

Ref: BarRizz