Like most Sicilian towns, Petralia Sottana, whose name distinguishes it from nearby Petralia Soprana, has seen peoples from distant lands arrive over the centuries, each leaving an imprint on local life. Some made their presence felt more forcefully than others, but each brought a culture that became part of the island’s own, giving Sicily, the ancient Trinacria, an identity that few places in Italy, or beyond it, can claim.
The town stretches along a slope some 2,950 to 3,600 feet above sea level, overlooking the upper valley of the southern Imera River, on the southern side of the Madonie within the park of the same name. Finds from the nearby Grotta del Vecchiuzzo place the earliest human settlement in the fourth or third millennium BC, during the Neolithic period.
