Piazza Armerina, splendid art city woven into the heart of Sicily, boasts a slew of monuments that tell of its glorious past. Meanwhile, the apple of the citizens' eyes is the Villa Romana del Casale; originally the property of a powerful Roman family, it dates back to the 4th Century A.D. This majestic Imperial villa, standing tall in the Province of Enna, is a magnificent rural abode, fascinating, above all, for its captivating mosaics, considered the most beautiful and best-preserved of their kind. The fruits of meticulous labor, these precise yet moving images make for a significant adornment to what remains of this extravagant residence – made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

The people of Caltagirone produced pottery already ten centuries before Christ. Under the Arab rule the town took the name of Qal ‘at al Gharùn meaning “Fortress of Jars” with reference to the processing of clay. The local artisans had the luck to get the raw material directly from the clay caves and to collect the firewood for their furnaces from the near wood Santo Pietro, so they quicly became the most important ceramics producers of the Island. The pottery decorums seem to be inspired to the splendid art of weaving and to the Sicilian embroidery.