Riserva Naturale

Riserva Naturale in Sicily

27 towns

Sicily has 27 Riserva Naturale communes in our index. They cluster in the Siracusa, Palermo, and Agrigento provinces.

The three most recognised in our catalogue are Sambuca di Sicilia, Menfi, and Montalbano Elicona. 24 more towns carry the mark alongside them.

Sambuca di Sicilia
Province: Agrigento · 350 m
An Arab-founded hill town in the Belice valley, still called Zabut in living memory before 1923.
Menfi
Province: Agrigento · 119 m
Sicily's triple-signal western coast town: 11,800 residents on a low ridge above 9 km of protected sand at Porto Palo, backed by cellars and olive groves that between them carry Italy's three major small-town quality marks.
Montalbano Elicona
Province: Messina · 907 m
A Nebrodi castle town at 907 meters, Frederick III of Aragon's summer residence and gateway to the Argimusco megalithic plateau.
Noto
Province: Siracusa · 152 m
The capital of Sicilian Baroque, rebuilt entirely in golden limestone after 1693.
Palazzolo Acreide
Province: Siracusa · 670 m
An 8,000-resident hilltop town on the Iblei plateau at 670m, rebuilt entirely in late Baroque after the 1693 earthquake and founded over the Greek Akrai colony in 664 BC, with a Greek theatre and a cluster of rock carvings unlike anything else nearby.
Pantelleria
Province: Trapani · 8 m
A volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.
Ragusa
Province: Ragusa · 502 m
Two cities split by a ravine on a Hyblean plateau at 502 meters, both rebuilt after 1693 and both UNESCO Baroque.
Caltagirone
Province: Catania · 611 m
Sicily's ceramic capital at 611 meters on the Erei ridge, 142 majolica-tiled steps to Santa Maria del Monte and a Val di Noto UNESCO baroque rebuild.
Cammarata
Province: Agrigento · 700 m
A Sicani town at 700 meters on the northeast slope of the peak that gives the comune its name and shape.
Castelvetrano
Province: Trapani · 187 m
The Belice valley town that owns Selinunte, the largest archaeological park in Europe, and bakes black bread from grain found in its tombs.
Ferla
Province: Siracusa · 500 m
A baroque village at 500 meters on the Monte Lauro slopes, the western gateway to the UNESCO necropolis of Pantalica eleven kilometers downhill.
Lipari
Province: Messina · 44 m
The largest Aeolian island and the only municipality that administers six of the seven, with a clifftop castle citadel rising above two harbors.
Monreale
Province: Palermo · 310 m
Above the Conca d'Oro at 310 meters, the cathedral William II built between 1174 and 1182 holds 6,340 square meters of Norman mosaics.
San Vito Lo Capo
Province: Trapani · 5 m
A three-kilometer white-sand beach at Sicily's northwest tip, the town that turned cous cous into a September festival.
Siracusa
Province: Siracusa · 17 m
Ortigia island, wrapped in honey-coloured Baroque stone, sits at the heart of the city Cicero called the most beautiful in the world, on the eastern Sicilian coast south of Catania.
Sortino
Province: Siracusa · 438 m
The eastern gateway to UNESCO Pantalica at 438 meters in the Iblei, Sicily's city of honey and home of the stuffed Sortino pizzolo.
Taormina
Province: Messina · 204 m
A terrace on Monte Tauro above the Ionian, with Etna on the southern horizon.
Catania
Province: Catania · 7 m
Sicily's second city and the cultural anchor of the Ionian coast — a UNESCO late-Baroque centro storico rebuilt in lava-black stone after the 1693 earthquake, sitting at the foot of Etna with a 17th-century elephant fountain (U Liotru) as its civic symbol.
Corleone
Province: Palermo · 542 m
A town of 10,364 in the Palermo hinterland that gave its name to Mario Puzo's Don Vito and now runs Italy's national antimafia documentation centre.
Lampedusa e Linosa
Province: Agrigento · 25 m
Italy's southernmost comune, three islands on the African continental shelf, closer to Tunisia than to Sicily.
Mezzojuso
Province: Palermo · 534 m
An Arbëreshë village of two mother churches, one Latin, one Byzantine, whose Arabic name means the houses of Joseph.
Aci Castello
Province: Catania · 15 m
A coastal town just north of Catania on the Riviera dei Ciclopi, where the basalt headland holds the 1076 Norman Castello d'Aci and the seven volcanic Faraglioni dei Ciclopi rise from the sea — the rocks the Cyclops threw at Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey.
Ispica
Province: Ragusa · 170 m
A Val di Noto Baroque hilltown on the southern Iblei plateau anchored by the 13-km Cava d'Ispica canyon with its 3,000+ rock-cut tombs and prehistoric dwellings — one of the largest cave-necropolis sites in the Mediterranean.
Nicosia
Province: Enna · 720 m
A Byzantine-Norman royal city at 720 meters on four hills, one of Sicily's principal Gallo-Italic centres where the Lombard dialect nkoukkà still survives.
Pachino
Province: Siracusa · 65 m
Sicily's southernmost town, on the Capo Passero promontory, and the name behind the Pomodoro di Pachino PGI cherry tomato.
Piana degli Albanesi
Province: Palermo · 720 m
The principal Arbëresh town of Sicily at 720 meters, founded in the fifteenth century by Albanians fleeing the Ottomans and still speaking arbëresh.
Ustica
Province: Palermo · 49 m
A volcanic island fifty-two kilometers north of Palermo with Italy's first marine protected area, lentil fields on lava, and a long memory as a prison.

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