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THE UNDERGROUND HEART OF SCIACCA
Journey along the charming route through the ancient caves of the regal charger. A meander of straits and sinuous alleys and stairs that descend to the port, hiding an elaborate underground work of productive engineering: hundreds of underground cavities, connected to each other, made Sciacca one of the main ones Sicilian wheat ports.
An obligatory stop, a substrate rich in truths and traditions where industriousness human allowed it marriage between the culture of the earth and that of the sea, between the peasant world and the marine one.
Indescribable beauties and evocative places to be discovered.
"PORTA DI MARE"
FOUNTAIN "ACQUA DI L'OCCHI"
"MADONNUZZA" CHURCH
ALLEYS OF THE GRAIN LOADER
ALLEYS OF THE GRAIN LOADER
ALLEYS OF THE GRAIN LOADER
ALLEYS OF THE GRAIN LOADER
ALLEYS OF THE GRAIN LOADER
ALLEYS OF THE GRAIN LOADER
SCALE TO ZIG ZAG
THE PORT
THE SHIPYARD
ANCIENT CAVES
ANCIENT CAVES
ANCIENT CAVES
THE ROYAL CHARGER
The loader of Sciacca was one of the main Sicilian wheat ports due to the considerable capacity for placing wheat corpses on the market: in the early fifteenth century it was the third after Licata and Agrigento and still in the modern age it remained in the first group of Sicilian loaders, i.e. among those who marketed more than a million bodies.
In Sciacca, following the construction of the Federiciane walls (1335-36), the old loader, which remained inside the city due to the continuous transit and rattling of the carts at all hours of the day, was suppressed and a new one was created new, under the Porta di Mare, near the port, in a dry and sloping area that could thus prevent
the accumulation of rainwater, defended on one side by the walls, on the other by the fort called "Propugnacolo di San Paolo". The new magazine could contain about 40,000 corpses of wheat and extended for about four hundred meters. Several floors were built on the slope, interspersed with streets, with fences or courtyards, some of which covered by canopies called pinnate. Originally, the granary pits were probably rock dwellings or burials, later enlarged and transformed into hypogeal environments, and then used as storage warehouses waiting to be loaded onto ships at the base of its port. The granaries were dug out of the rock, had the characteristic shape of an "inverted funnel", with access from above and were connected to each other with channels, called cannoli, which allowed the transfer of the cereals stored in pits of various sizes. In the same area of the Loader there were the different offices of the staff in charge of its management. All the loaders, royal and baronial, were commanded by a portulan master and without his authorization it was not possible to extract the stored grain. The vice-portulani, usually members of the urban patriciate, directed the traffic of the individual shippers, managing their affairs and obtaining generous profits. In Sciacca the office was held by the most prominent families of the place such as the Monteliana, the Peralta and the Perollo.
The position of Sciacca meant that a vast area gravitated on its loader, roughly including the basins of the Platani and southern Belice; the port of Sciacca, therefore, became a natural outlet for many centers in the hinterland. Among the "foreigners" who managed foreign trade, the Genoese should be mentioned in the first place, who enjoyed an almost monopoly of trade in Sciacca and created their own consulate there at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Also active were the Iberians who already had a Catalan vice-consulate in Sciacca in the fourteenth century and, finally, there were the Pisans.
The Chargers of Sicily were abolished with a decree on 21 June 1819, when they were replaced by the mills as a place for gathering wheat.
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