FALCONARA - CASTELLO DI FALCONARA

Falconara lies at 18m a.s.l. in the province of Caltanissetta. The city is one of naturalistic interest, home to a natural park on the seaside, the areas of the Desusino Mount – where is an indigenous, later Hellenized settlement – and the Salso or lower Imera river, Sicily’s second river. Its castle is most renowned.

The Castle of Falconara – Alongside a picturesque and beautiful millstone, atop a rocky promontory dominating the sea, rises the Castello di Falconara. Its construction dates from different epochs. A square tower, where the Lords of the castle used to breed falcons – hence the castle’s name – is all that remains of the original structure.

Its origins are much uncertain. The earliest records hold that King Martin of Aragon granted the castle to Ugone di Santapau – a descendant of the aristocratic Adamaras – for having supported him against adverse groups, and that in 1540 it passed to Ambrogio di Santapau, later become the Prince of Butera. Various owners were to succeed in the the following centuries, until, in 1800, it was acquired by the Count Wilding, a German officer and, at his death, inherited by his brother Ernesto who during the 1848 disorders preferred to return to his country selling the castle to the Baron Antonio Chiaramonte Bordonaro, the direct ancestor of its current proprietor Roberto Chiaramonte Bordonaro.