Tajate

contrada Calie
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Immediately north of Acquarica, along the road to Taurisano, there is an area called tajate: they are quarries used during a long period of time for the extraction of tuff, deployed as a building material.
In the 1960s there were 10 quarries where 200 workers used to work. The annual production was 25000 cubic meters of building materials.
The quarries, covering an area of about three hundred hectares, are the result of the exhausting but fundamental work of the 'cavatufi' (quarries workers) which have produced, according Prof. Mario Ricchiuto, 'an inversed architecture, where the empty spaces correspond to the full ones of who knows which cathedral, coastal tower, farm, castle, palace or house'. On closer inspection, indeed, the tajate scenario is an inversed one, obtained by subtraction of the stone, which created these multiform blocks.
Tajate are a testimony of the close relationship between man and nature; today they constitute an environmental, historical and cultural heritage to be protected and preserved.

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