Terrazzamenti Colti: Pantelleria brings its stone gardens back to life
The National Park entrusts abandoned land to new farmers: a project giving a future back to the island's dry-stone walls and rural landscape
There is a landscape on Pantelleria that tells of centuries of toil and ingenuity: that of the terraces, strips of land wrested from the mountainside and held up by kilometres of dry-stone walls, built stone upon stone without mortar, using a technique recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage of humanity. In recent decades, however, many of these terraces have been abandoned: fewer hands in the fields, crumbling walls, land returning to the wild.
Today something is changing. With the "Pantelleria Terrazzamenti Colti" project, promoted by the Pantelleria Island National Park Authority together with the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, the island has launched a concrete initiative to bring uncultivated or at-risk land back into production.
The mechanism is as simple as it is revolutionary, and unfolds in two phases:
- The owners of abandoned or at-risk terraces have made their land available for rent for at least fifteen years;
- A second public call, which closed in mid-September 2026, gathered applications from new farmers: agricultural entrepreneurs, young people, companies and associations ready to take care of these plots.
The favoured crops are those that have always shaped Pantelleria's agricultural identity: the low-trained alberello vine, the caper, the olive and oregano, alongside other Mediterranean produce and small-scale livestock farming compatible with the territory. The initiative is part of the Park's AgriCultura programme and also aims to create new job opportunities, encourage generational renewal and introduce innovative, environmentally friendly techniques.
For those who love Pantelleria, and for those who dream of living here, this project carries deep meaning. The terraces are not merely agriculture: they are the very scenery of the island, the reason why a sunset over the vineyards of Serraglia or a walk among the dry-stone walls of Mueggen is as moving as a swim at Cala Levante. A cultivated terrace is a piece of landscape saved; a restored wall is a fragment of history that lives on.
In the coming years, walking along the island's trails, we will be able to see the results: terraces green once more, stones set back in line, young hands at work where only brambles once grew. This is the most authentic face of slow, sustainable tourism: an island that does not simply preserve its beauty, but cultivates it, quite literally, day after day.
