Torregrotta


Torregrotta is an Italian town of 7,297 inhabitants in the metropolitan city of Messina in Sicily.
The town, located 44 meters above sea level in the, lies between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the first Peloritani hills.
Initially built in medieval times as a hamlet of the fief of Santa Maria della Scala, after a period of abandonment, it was rebuilt starting in 1526. At the beginning of the 19th century it became a sub-municipality of Roccavaldina, from which it obtained administrative autonomy in 1923. The 16th-century center expanded mainly from the second half of the 19th century onward.
A center historically linked to agriculture, the place of origin of the, it has lost its traditional agricultural role in favor of the tertiary sector. The clay extraction and processing industry had a certain boost in the 20th century, but almost completely ceased to exist in the 2000s. Medium and small artisan businesses predominate.

Physical geography

Territory

The territory of Torregrotta is located along the northern coast of Sicily, in the, and extends south towards the foothills of the Peloritani Mountains. With an area of 4.13 km², it is the second smallest municipality in the valley, preceded only by Valdina, and one of the smallest in the metropolitan city of Messina. Its natural boundaries are the Caracciolo, Sottocatena, Bagheria, Lavina and Tyrrhenian Sea streams; it also borders the following municipalities: Valdina to the east, Roccavaldina to the south, Monforte San Giorgio to the south and to the west. The administrative boundaries form a quadrilateral of approximately rectangular shape, measuring 3700 meters in latitude and 1150 meters in longitude.
Most of the land in Torregrotta, about 70%, is morphologically flat, with slopes that do not exceed 5%. The plain, in addition to the coastal strip, extends inland as far as the Bagheria stream and constitutes the easternmost portion of the valley through which the Niceto river flows. The hilly area, bordered to the east by the valley and to the west by the Caracciolo stream, is instead formed by the ridge that slopes down towards the coast and, in the central-northern sector, is characterized by several clay quarries that for a long time were used by the brick industry. The coastline extends for about 1200 meters and has low, sandy beaches of varying appearance and extension over time.
The city extends across the plain, mainly in a latitudinal direction and without interruption, from the coast to the southern border, and transversally near the SS 113 highway. The altitude of the town, between 3 and 50 meters above sea level, is officially indicated as 44 meters above sea level because the town hall is at that altitude. The altitude range of the entire territory of Torregrotta varies from sea level to the highest hilltop, to the south-east of the town, at an altitude of 193 meters above sea level.

Hydrography

The valley in which Torregrotta is located is part of the river basin which is considered one of the main waterways of the Peloritani mountains for its historical and naturalistic value. However, the Niceto does not cross the municipal territory, flowing just beyond the western administrative border, a short distance from the town. To the east, beyond the hilly area, the soil is crossed by the Caracciolo stream which, throughout its course, only 4.9 km long, separates Torregrotta from the municipality of Valdina flowing into the Tyrrhenian Sea, and whose basin partly includes the territory of Torregrotta.
In addition to the Caracciolo, there are several minor waterways that flow through the municipal area, including the Bagheria, the main tributary of the Niceto and the territorial boundary with the municipality of Monforte San Giorgio for about 600 meters. Tributaries of the Bagheria are the Sottocatena stream, which marks part of the border with the municipality of Roccavaldina, and the Granatara stream that flows near the Grotta district. All the aforementioned minor water bodies can be dry for most of the year as they are temporary streams depending on rainfall. The Bagheria stream is an exception, which thanks to a complex drainage basin has a semi-permanent torrential hydrological regime, typical of rivers, with floods in the winter season and periods of low water or drought in the summer season.
Torregrotta's major water resources are concentrated in the underground aquifers from which they are extracted through wells and drills to supply the municipal aqueduct and for the irrigation of agricultural fields. The aquifer, which is directly fed by rainwater and water that has infiltrated down from the mountains, is characterized by the changing height of the average water level, which varies according to the local properties of the terrain, and can be found just below the surface or reach depths of several tens of meters. Furthermore, the aquifer system is isolated at the bottom by a layer of impermeable material composed of gray-blue clay. In summer, during the dry period of the streams, the groundwater rises spontaneously from the ground, forming several natural springs near the coast; in fact, as demonstrated by some studies, the rainfall that enriches the catchment basins, infiltrating the soil during the rainy season, takes about six months to reach the coastal plain. The phenomenon was known since Roman times, as told by Pliny the Elder:
One of the springs is the source of the Lavina, a small stream that flows near the coast on the border with the municipality of Monforte San Giorgio. At the end of the 19th century, during the reclamation of the coastal area, most of the springs were channeled with ditches called saie, near which, until the last century, the folkloric rite of washing wool was carried out, which would then be used to make mattresses and household cushions.

Geology

The entire town is built on a layer of Holocene alluvial deposits consisting of clastic sediments, in particular sands, often silty, with gravel and pebbles from metamorphic rocks inside. Their formation is the result of the erosive action of present-day watercourses, which over time have transported and deposited downstream fragments of rock eroded in the mountains by exogenous agents. Recent floods have covered the entire flat area, with a variable thickness that can exceed even 30 meters. The topmost layer, about 1 meter thick, is made up of agricultural soil rich in humus, organic material and nutrients.
The eastern part of the territory of Torregrotta is dominated by compact layers of blue-gray clay, sometimes more than 100 meters deep, with silty layers in between. After the recent floods, these are the most common formation on the surface and are suitable for the production of bricks thanks to the good characteristics of the material. In 2001, during a geological survey of the clays in the Bottisco district, a fossil fragment of a dwarf elephant tusk was found, dating from the Middle Pleistocene.
In the hilly areas of the Maddalena district, alongside the clays, there are outcrops of calcarenites and organogenic sands with a yellowish-gray color that have cross-bedding and variable consistency. They also contain nannoflora and planktonic foraminifera. Clays and organogenic formations form the substrate for recent alluvial deposits and on the top of the hills they are intersected by marine terraces composed of silt, gravel and other aggregates of crystalline origin.
In the southern part of the municipal territory, various geological formations emerge on the surface: close to the banks of the Caracciolo stream, there is a strip of rock formations composed of marly limestone and calcareous marl whose peculiar characteristic is the high number of cracks generally filled with pelite. A short distance from the Grotta district, on the other hand, there are formations of whitish evaporitic limestone that rest on stratifications of sediments in which medium-sized sandstone rocks alternate, sometimes dissolving into sands, and layers of clay. The deepest geological formation, overlying all the previous ones, is represented by the metamorphic rocks of the Aspromonte unit dominated by paragneiss. The riverbeds and beaches are formed by current floods, that is to say materials transported and deposited by the waters of the rivers or by the waves of the sea. In the first case these are sediments formed by gravel and sand with pebbles and fragments of rock of different sizes; in the second case they are sandy deposits.
The most recent geological formations are the screes that can be found in a limited portion of the hillside and are made up of sandy and silty materials. In summary, the stratigraphy of the subsoil in Torregrotta includes the following succession of geological structures:
From a tectonic point of view, the area where Torregrotta is located went through an initial phase of orogenic movements of the lower formations and, starting from the Miocene, a process of land uplift as witnessed by the marine terraces present on the hills. This led to the activation of erosive phenomena and the creation of extensional faults of which, however, there is no historical evidence of movement. The main earthquakes that have affected the city have always originated from the seismogenic sources of the Calabro-Peloritano Arc. According to the seismic classification of the Italian national territory, Torregrotta is classified as follows:
  • Zone 2, Prime Ministerial Decree no. 3274 of 20/03/2003

    Climate

Torregrotta has a typical warm temperate climate that alternates hot summers winters that are not excessively cold, with mild and comfortable intermediate seasons. According to long-term surveys by the local meteorological station, the average annual temperature is around 18.0 °C; the coldest month is February, with an average temperature of 11.1 °C, and the hottest month is August, with an average temperature of 25.9 °C. In summer the temperature can exceed 40 °C, but in rare cases, and in winter it almost never drops below 0 °C. Seasonal temperature variations are moderate, ranging between 6 °C and 8 °C. In Torregrotta, annual rainfall averages 946.3 mm and rarely turns into heavy rain or snowfall, the last of which occurred on January 31, 1999 and, to a lesser extent, on December 31, 2014. The rainy season is between fall and the first part of spring; however, rainfall is irregular both in annual quantity and daily distribution, often characterized by high accumulations in a short period of time. Only 25-30% of the total annual rainfall falls in late spring and summer, which is the driest season. Torregrotta is often characterized by windy days during the calendar year. The mistral is the most frequent wind and in its most intense phases it is accompanied by violent sea storms. The libeccio and scirocco winds are also periodic.
The Torregrotta weather station has been active since January 1, 2002 and is part of the SIAS network of the Sicilian Region and the SCIA SINAnet national network managed by ISPRA. According to the climatic classification of Italian municipalities, Torregrotta is classified as follows:
  • Climate zone: B;
  • Degree days: 702.