Gibil Gabib is an archaeological site located about 5 km south of Caltanissetta, on a 615-metre-high mountain.
Excavations were first undertaken in the area in the middle of the 19th century and were reprised with great enthusiasm in the 1950s by the archaeologist Dinu Adameșteanu. They came to an end in 1984. In those undertaken in the middle of the 20th century, remains dating to the 6th century BC were brought to light, including parts of the city walls and some ceramic objects of the Bronze Age Castelluccio culture, while the 1980s excavations revealed a defensive tower from the middle of the 6th century BC. These discoveries were of great significance, because they helped to clarify the course of the city wall discovered almost thirty years earlier.
Objects discovered in the excavations include vases, objects for everyday use, plates and lamps, as well as a terracotta statue of a female divinity and the terracotta head, which demonstrate the existence of various spaces dedicated to religious cult. At the base of the mountain, there is a necropolis, where Siceliote red-figure pottery was found.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.