Gioeni Park

The land on which Gioeni Park stands was owned by several Catanese families; the vegetable gardens from where it is now possible to admire the city once belonged to Giuseppe Gioeni Schininà, Carmelo Barbagallo, and Baron Felice Spitaleri. In 1931 for the first time there was talk of building a park in the Tondo Gioeni area; in 1942 the project was approved, but it remained on paper due to the outbreak of World War II. It wasonly in 1972 that the project was finally approved and then work began.

Gioeni Park, is dedicated to Giuseppe Gioeni D'Angiò, a naturalist and volcanologist who lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, was only inaugurated in the mid-1990s. Since then, the garden, has been redeveloped more than once.

The park has an area of about 7.5 hectares and is built on volcanic terrain, whose impervious lines it follows, thanks to a series of lava stone terraces, which recall its identity. It hasMediterranean scrub vegetation with native essences such as olive, bougainvillea, oleander, agave and prickly pear.

The pathways and artifacts are made of lava stone from Etna. Theremains of an aqueduct, dating back to the Benedictines, cross the park, creating an archaeological promenade.
The monks owned land and water mills on the hillsides of Leucatia, where, beginning in the mid-1600s, construction of this impressive structure began.Water from the springs, which were numerous in this area, was piped into a large cistern (or ?water barrel?) and then followed the natural slope of the land, which was kept constant by arches. Along the way, catch basins allowed irrigation of nearby land and access to the most precious commodity, for the inhabitants of the various neighborhoods.