Gonfalone Quarry in Ragusa
Cava Gonfalone is industrial archeology site, a huge latomia dug by man.
In Cava Gonfalone, the so-called "pirriatura", they worked hard to extract the stone materials to expand the city of Ragusa. Of this long process of extraction, the immense quarries that extend for over 15 thousand square meters under the city remain today.
In the western part of the quarries there are the marks left by the quarrymen's pickaxe in the walls and vaults. In the eastern part of the quarries there are traces left by the circular saws used in the last phase of exploitation of the mines, closed around the 1940s. The deepest and darkest part of the quarries features a lake for collecting rainwater and six concrete pylons built by the Civil Engineers when the hospital above was enlarged.
During the Second World War, the quarries were used by the inhabitants of the Cappuccini district as an air-raid shelter.
The quarries can be reached from a small road which joins Via Risorgimento or from the hospital gardens, via a pedestrian path that descends to the valley floor.
