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Casa Teresa

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Casa Teresa takes its name from the surname of its first owners, who came from the island of Pantelleria and practiced farming and livestock breeding here. Built between 1876 and 1877, it served as the permanent home of the entire family.

The house is made up of several rooms and outdoor areas: the cammara, the room where the family lived; the makasenu, a storage room used to preserve crops, where a small olive press carved directly into the rock floor can still be seen; the kitchen with the furnu; the pagghiaru, or haystack; the stadda, used to shelter the donkey; the palmento, used for wine production; and the jardinu, a circular dry-stone structure with walls over two meters high and a diameter of several meters, inside which a lemon or orange tree was usually cultivated.

In front of the entrance, a round stone can still be seen, once used as the millstone of the mulineddu.

The cammara dammuso contained very little furniture, with only a few objects stored inside niches carved into the thick walls. From hooks hanging from the ceiling descended ropes that supported the cannizze, horizontal wooden shelves where bread and cheese were stored.

The passiaturi, a sort of external corridor often covered by the pinnata, a canopy made of tied reeds, connected the different rooms of the house.

Other outdoor structures included the aria, the circular threshing floor used for cereals; the mannara, the enclosure for sheep and goats returning from grazing; and a large covered cistern used to collect rainwater.

Some rooms of Casa Teresa feature domed roofs and double-layered walls designed to better insulate the interiors from the high summer temperatures, which often lasted for long periods. The domed roofs were also useful for improving rainwater collection, directing the water into the cistern.

Casa Teresa was acquired by the Sicilian Region in 1994 and restored under the supervision of the Cultural Heritage Department of Agrigento.

Since 2025, it has been managed by ATS Pelagies.