Stretched on the side of the valley of the Salty river, to the slopes of the Mountain St. Giulian, Caltanissetta ties his passed to the activity of the sulphur.
This last has actually made the city the mining fulcrum in Sicily to the first decades of the century
last, when the miners, Vuillier writes, "they life and they envied the pigs that
to end year they were certain here is of to died"…and to remember the merciless report of Zola that gives, to whom reads Germinal, "a shiver of terror". According to what testified by the geographer Arabic Idrisi,
the big urban area of this city is originated beginning from Nissa (from which nisseno, inhabitant of Caltanissetta),old sican village ; reporting to the women of Nissa, Idrisi called Caltanissetta " Qalat-an-Nisa ", that is "the women's castle". Today this center maintains the supremacy in the commerce of the sulphur and is also important agricultural market, but its economy is leaned above all on the industry of wine, on the refinement of the oil and on the tourism, famous in the whole world it is in fact the Holy Week in Caltanissetta . Interesting archaeological finds of the near places as that of Sabucina, testify the sican origin of the city.
In the zone of the happy Mountain (Gebel Habib) an epigraph has been recovered before greek that mentions village from whose name derived that of Caltanissetta to the ancient Nissa,: from the Arabic Qalat-an-Nisa, that is "the women's castle."
After the Arabs, the Normans that occupied Nissa in 1087, consecrated to you the beautiful Romanesque church of Saint Spirit. When, three centuries later, William Peralta becomes gentleman of Caltanissetta, it begins in Sicily the so-called one "Government of the four Vicars."
The dominion of the Peraltas is testified by the ruins of the castle of Pietrarossa, (still visible near the city also after the 1567 earthquake) where they were gathered, in 1358, the four more powerful gentlemen of Sicily (Alagona, Ventimiglia, Peralta, Chiaramonte), to decide the fates of the island under the new government. To favor the export of the sulphur, the Moncadas (1553) they made to build, on the Salty river, the bridge of Capodarso, whose mighty arcade is still today visible together with the grandiose but incomplete building Moncada. Between 1500 and 1700 many communes nisseni they were transformed, from rural suburbs what they were, in real cities to testimony of the increasing feudality.
To the next day of the feudalism (1818 around) it began to take form the territorial entity of the province of Caltanissetta that today we know.
During the borbonic's dominion (1735-1860), Caltanissetta became chief town of province; this fact estranged the nissenis from the separatistic aims in Palermo, whose armed gangs, induced by the prince St. Cataldo and avid of blood and of loot, they gave the district of the Grazia to the flames. In 1849 a delegation of palermitani offered, really to Caltanissetta, the capitulation of Sicily to the borbonis at the end of the federal revolution driven by Roger Settimo. They belong to the most recent history in this city the mining calamities that the death of hundreds of men has provoked,: the mines of Trabonella, Gessolungo and Deliella are sadly remembered.
In the zone of the happy Mountain (Gebel Habib) an epigraph has been recovered before greek that mentions village from whose name derived that of Caltanissetta to the ancient Nissa,: from the Arabic Qalat-an-Nisa, that is "the women's castle."
After the Arabs, the Normans that occupied Nissa in 1087, consecrated to you the beautiful Romanesque church of Saint Spirit. When, three centuries later, William Peralta becomes gentleman of Caltanissetta, it begins in Sicily the so-called one "Government of the four Vicars."
The dominion of the Peraltas is testified by the ruins of the castle of Pietrarossa, (still visible near the city also after the 1567 earthquake) where they were gathered, in 1358, the four more powerful gentlemen of Sicily (Alagona, Ventimiglia, Peralta, Chiaramonte), to decide the fates of the island under the new government. To favor the export of the sulphur, the Moncadas (1553) they made to build, on the Salty river, the bridge of Capodarso, whose mighty arcade is still today visible together with the grandiose but incomplete building Moncada. Between 1500 and 1700 many communes nisseni they were transformed, from rural suburbs what they were, in real cities to testimony of the increasing feudality.
To the next day of the feudalism (1818 around) it began to take form the territorial entity of the province of Caltanissetta that today we know.
During the borbonic's dominion (1735-1860), Caltanissetta became chief town of province; this fact estranged the nissenis from the separatistic aims in Palermo, whose armed gangs, induced by the prince St. Cataldo and avid of blood and of loot, they gave the district of the Grazia to the flames. In 1849 a delegation of palermitani offered, really to Caltanissetta, the capitulation of Sicily to the borbonis at the end of the federal revolution driven by Roger Settimo. They belong to the most recent history in this city the mining calamities that the death of hundreds of men has provoked,: the mines of Trabonella, Gessolungo and Deliella are sadly remembered.
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