Riesi

Riesi is an inland town in the Province of Caltanissetta, set in central Sicily at the foot of Monte Santa Veronica and close to the Salso river valley, about 330 metres above sea level. Its setting gives it the character of the Sicilian interior: rural, compact and closely tied to the land, with a local identity shaped by agricultural life, religious traditions and the memory of sulphur mining.

The surrounding territory has been inhabited since remote antiquity, with settlement traces dating to the 3rd–2nd millennium BC and later evidence connected with Greek, Roman and Byzantine phases. The modern village, however, belongs to a later feudal story: in 1513 Giovanni Roys de Calcena received a licence to populate the fief, while its official development is linked to Baron Pietro Altariva in 1647. The settlement first took the name Altariva, before returning in the 18th century to the older name Riesi.

This layered origin gives Riesi a distinctive profile: an ancient inhabited landscape, a feudal town reborn under a different name, and one of Sicily’s inland communities most strongly associated with sulphur miners.