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The stone, the saint and the legend

Situated in the western part of Ragusa province, Acate stands on a slight hill around the castle of the Princes of Biscari, at the centre of a richly cultivated area, in the valley of the River Dirillo. The present name was given to the town in 1938, and it is essentially the name Achates that the Romans gave to the River Dirillo. Rather than from the name of Ihe “trusted friend” of Aeneas, the term seems to derive from the hard stone agate, which in the past could be found along the banks of the river.

The original nucleus dates back to the fifteenth century, though a Biscari farmstead seems already to have existed in the Greek era; the town was seriously damaged in the 1693 earthquake. Starting from Angevin times, the Biscari feud passed through the hands of various noble fami Lies; in the early years of the fifteenth century it went to the Count of Modica, Bernardo Cabrera, and from him to the Catania Castello family, who subsequently became relatives of the Paternos; under the Castello family, there began a period of splendour for the little town. The Paternò Castello princes kept Biscari until the early nineteenth century.

The old part of Acate is gathered around the castle and the main monuments in the town: the cathedral church, redone in the nineteenth century, and the San Vlncenzo church. which was previously dedicated to St. Joseph. The body of St. Vincent, martyred in the first centuries AD., has been kept in the latter since 1722, when Pope Clement Xl donated it to Prince Vincenzo Paternò Castello, apparently after a tragic episode of conjugal jealousy in the prince’s family, on which popular imagination has embroidered legendary connotations, From 1722 there seems to date the race held every year for the solemn feast of the saint, on the third Sunday after Easter. This is a famous horse race, preceded by a colourful historical pageant.

The residence of the Princes of Biscari was started in 1494 by the feudal vassal Guglielmo Raimondo. After it went to the Paternò Castello family, it was greatly modified and integrated by Prince Agatino (c.1666), who re¬founded the feud, and later, in the first half of the eighteenth century, by Vincenzo Paternò Castello. The complex is rectangular in shape; there is a central courtyard and corner towers, Some central raised parts, placed on the long sides of the rectangle and opening up with loggias towards the courtyard, define the recherchè composition of the vast edifice, This cultivated and unusual civic dwelling solution in the Baroque age is recorded in a painting kept at Palazzo Biscari in Catania.

Testi © Azienda Autonoma Provinciale per l'Incremento Turistico di Ragusa
Via Capitano Bocchieri, 33 - 97100 RAGUSA
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Foto © Studio Scivoletto