In Isnello, look up and be amazed by the stars

In the Madonie, you can get caught up in the charm of the architecture of a mountain village, which structurally resembles a natural crib with nature trails that meander along the most beautiful and unspoiled areas of Sicily. In the small town of Isnello – a simply magical place – you only need to follow one of these paths that overlook the town and you can spend the whole night with your head tilted upwards, admiring the stars.

In the Contrada Fontana Mitri, a few kilometres away from the town centre, you can find Gal Hassin – an astronomy park and the highest observatory in Italy – embracing the whole of the Mediterranean and offering a 360° immersion into the world of astronomy. Experts, students and enthusiasts alike will be intrigued by the work of scholars in the field. The structure is equipped with a digital planetarium (with a dome 10m in diameter); an observation terrace, with mobile coverage and 12 observation tools, a radio telescope with an antenna of 2.3m, an outdoor astronomical lab with solar clocks of various types (the equatorial ring of Hipparchus, the plinth of Ptolemy, the Compass rose), a monumental map of the world, with a support and a rotation axis, a solar laboratory in which (through the use of a heliostat) the solar disc can be projected in real-time on a screen for analysis.