Sant'Alfio

Sant'Alfio sits at 537 meters on the eastern slope of Etna, eight kilometers from the active crater. The village grew around a seventeenth-century sanctuary dedicated to the brothers Alfio, Filadelfo and Cirino, three Christian martyrs deported from the Greek Aegean to Sicily under Decius and venerated as the town's patrons. The real draw is older.

The Castagno dei Cento Cavalli, on the Linguaglossa road just outside the centro, is the largest and oldest sweet chestnut in the world, between 2,000 and 4,000 years old, listed by Guinness for a recorded girth of 57. 9 meters in 1780. The trunk has since split into separate stems sharing one root system.

The legend gives the tree its name: Queen Joanna of Aragon and her hundred mounted retainers are said to have sheltered beneath it during a storm. The slopes around the village produce Etna Rosso DOC from Nerello Mascalese and cherries that fill the late-June sagra.