Petralia Sottana

Petralia Sottana sits at 1,000 meters in the heart of the Madonie, the second-highest range in Sicily after Etna. The town is the only commune in Sicily to hold a Bandiera Arancione from the Italian Touring Club, and the headquarters of the Parco delle Madonie are inside its territory. The two Petralie, Sottana and Soprana, share a Roman and Byzantine origin and were rebuilt under the Normans on opposite slopes of the same ridge; Sottana, the lower of the two, became the administrative centre of the surrounding mountain villages.

The Chiesa Madre, also known as the Chiesa Maria Santissima Assunta, is the largest place of worship in the Madonie, seventeenth-century and rebuilt around an earlier core in the Pusterna district. The Chiesa di Santa Maria di Loreto, founded in 1484 and remade in the seventeenth century, has majolica spires that mark the south end of the centro. Piazza del Popolo holds the Neo-Gothic Palazzo Pottino, the marble Quattro Cannoli fountain of Billiemi stone, and the Oratorio delle Anime Purganti.