Cavagrande del Cassibile

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The Cavagrande del Cassibile Nature Reserve is an area of ​​the Ibleo plateau which assumes spectacular aspects due to the presence of deep fractures, the quarries, created by the erosion of the watercourses that still flow on their bottom.
L ' area of ​​the reserve is crossed by the Cassibile river, the ancient Greek Kacyparis, which over the millennia has created a series of deep canyons 10 kilometers long.
The reserve includes the quarry area, whose height difference is about 300 meters, and the mouth of the river on the Ionian Sea at the beach of the Marchesa di Cassibile.
The inaccessible overhanging walls of the quarry and the presence of water allowed the settlement of inhabited settlements in the Paleolithic era. The Sicilians were the first inhabitants of this place, and here they built two rupestrian villages: the northern one, which you immediately notice as soon as you look out from the belvedere, the Dieri rock complex; and the southern one, almost opposite: the Grotta dei briganti or della "Cunziria". While on the edge of the reserve, to the north-east, there are various ancient necropolises, known as Necropoli del Cassibile.
In the valley floor, a complex system of small waterfalls and natural reservoirs, among which the most evocative, known as the lakes of Cavagrande or lakes of Avola, can be reached from the viewpoint of Avola Antica.
The riparian forest extends along the banks of the river for a few tens of meters , where there are also magnificent oriental plane trees, the most ancient specimens of which have trunks with a diameter of about one and a half meters.