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What makes Castelbuono such a special place is its ideal location between the sea and the mountains.
It’s one of the first things locals say about their town: “E’ fra mare e monti.”
The town of Castelbuono and its looming cube-shaped castle lie along State Highway 286,a two-lane road that winds into the Madonie Mountains, and it is only 10 kilometers as the crow flies to the Thryyhenian Sea.
From the sea, the highway snakes up a valley. It is lush by Sicilian standards as it soaks up humid sea breezes and gets refreshed by a small river.
It’s a lovely stretch passing manicured farmsteads, the extensive vineyards of Sant’Anastasia, a former monastery that’s been given a new life as a restaurant, hotel, olive farm and winery.
After some 6 kilometers up the valley, the road crests at a place known as Monte Nero and the soaring peaks of the Madonie and Nebrodi mountains unfold before you with the busy town of Castelbuono nestled at the center of this bucolic and mountainous picture of green forests, country homes, livestock,farms, distant mountaintop towns.
The highway floats into the valleys that lie between Monte Nero and Castelbuono.
of hill country, sits at about 400 meters above sea level but feels like it is much higher because of the presence of Pizzo Carbonara at its shoulders. The Carbonara pizzo is a massiccio-like plateaued mountain that reaches at its tallest point 1,982 meters of altitude.
Second only to the soaring slopes of Mount Etna,Pizzo Carbonara is Sicily’s highest mountain. It lies at the center of a small mountain range called the Madonie Mountains.
The sea, meanwhile, is just over the horizon from Casteluono, about 12 kilometers away but hidden behind a rim of hills and mountains running along the northern shores of Sicily.