The island of Salina is the right environment for the caper to grow and develop. The volcanic soil with high potassium content and the constant sea breeze have made the caper plant, a perennial shrub of likely tropical origins and existing in different varieties, very widespread and absolutely int...

Pumice has been widely used in Aeolian architecture because of its very low weight and its very high insulating power. In the form of small stones it was used in traditional Aeolian architecture to cover the cannizze of attics, which in turn were supported by strong chestnut beams. A layer of lim...

Pumice is a magmatic rock caused by very violent explosive eruptions. If you look closely at a small pumice stone you will see very small round holes that are not connected to each other and therefore do not allow water to penetrate the rock. This makes it a rock with a lower density than water, w...

The capital is the upper element of a column with a decorative and load-bearing function. It is the connecting point between the vertical and horizontal parts of the structure. ...

The cloister is a part of a convent, monastery or abbey, consisting of a central open area surrounded by covered corridors, from which the main convent rooms can be accessed. The first examples of cloisters are found in buildings used by monks of the order of St. Benedict during the Middle Ages. ...

The term “Normans” refers to a population of northern Europe, which lived around 1000 years ago. They landed in Messina, Sicily in 1061, when Sicily was ruled by the Arabs. They built several castles and fortresses throughout Sicily, and their rule ended in 1198 with the death of the last memb...

Saint Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles of Christ also known in the Gospel of John as Nathaniel, a native of Cana, who died around the middle of the 1st century, probably in Syria. It is assumed that the name Bartholomew derives from the Aramaic “bar” meaning son, and “talmai” meani...

A lava dome is a structure composed of extremely viscous lava (which flows slowly and with difficulty) with a typical dome shape. They are formed because of the high viscosity of the lava, which comes out of the ground at relatively low temperatures (600-800 °C), and therefore much of the lava is ...

Barbarossa, “red beard” in Italian, was considered the king of Mediterranean pirates in the 16th century. His real name was Hayreddin (Khayr ad-Din) and he was hired by the Turks when Suleiman the Magnificent, around 1540, tasked him with arming a powerful fleet of 150 ships to rescue the King...

The thermal springs of the island of Lipari are remembered by writers of Greek and Roman times (Aristotle, Diodorus, Strabo, Athenaeum and Pliny) and were so famous that one of the minor thermal baths of Rome bore the name of Aeolia. All the historical sources refer to the thermal spring of San C...