DAMMUSO ANCIENT BUILDING IN LAVA STONE

Pantelleria is the rare result of a perfectly succesfull combination between man's work and nature.

The feeling that you have, bunning around the island, is that everything man has built during years has indeed always existed. It is like lava, in its whirling agitation, has shaped, as well as the “Kuddie” (rocky hills), the valleys and the cliffs, also the architectural models necessary to survive in such a hostile environment.

The Pantelleria’s Dammuso is a construction built “with addiction” to the main central room, wich has a barrel roof, necessary to protect the interior from moisture and to keep it cool during the long hot summers. Moreover the room temperature was perfect to dry grapes, figs and tomatoes.

There were mainly two dammusi contructions techniques: “a sacco” and “a petra taddiata”. The first technique foresaw that were two rows of stones, one external and one internal, then filled by ground and small stones. This scheme was useful also beacuse it allowed to clean the ground. Indeed with the second skill called “petra taddiata”, which means “squared stones”, the thickness of the wall reaches the 50-90 cm, which allow to keep the rooms fresh in the summer and warm in the winter. You can find this typical dammusi mainly in Khamma, Tracino and Scauri. The external plasters are generally painted with pastel colours or simply withed.

Usually  you can enter the dammuso by a path named “u passiaturi”, which is a veranda with shard ground.

Just in front of Dammuso you can find both “a vucca da isterna” the entrance of the cystern, and “i ducchene” stone seats, supplied with espaliers. Generally the “occhi d’archetti” faced the verand, these are two round arches, which indicate the entrance of the kitchen, the heart of the house. In front of the kitchen there is the oven, covered by majolic tiles, where once the house women cooked the bread.

Closed to the kitchen we found the living room “a kammara” accross wich, we can reach the bedroom “arkova”.

Oltre alla cucina, nel dammuso troviamo la sala (soggiorno), a “Kammara”, ovvero la stanza dalla quale si accede alla camera da letto (“arkova”).

Anciently every dammuso had also “u magnanu” (the vegetable garden), l’aira (the farmyard) e “u stinnituri”. The farmyard was a round place with a central pole, where the donkey was tied for threshing. The “stinnituri” was a squared placed where they dry the zibibbo grapes to obtain the raisin (named Malaga).

Finally just near the Dammuso we can find a placed named “u Jardinu”(the garden). This place has a circular shape and is characterized by high walls to protect the plants from the wind in order to allow them to grow. Infact you can find inside citrus trees.