Cemetery Chapel, Mascalucia, Sicily, Italy [Photography]

This photo shows the traditional Sicilian building method with Etna’s basalt lava. You will see this everywhere on the east coast of the island. In modern buildings, the basalt is usually cut and finished to a high polish and used as trim for poured-in-place concrete structures with terracotta black inner walls. Our family’s kitchen is fitted with lovely basalt lava counters matched with traditional Sicilian tiles. The muratore (masons), literally translated as wall builders, were skilled craftsmen who could take randomly shaped rock and make beautiful, strong, structures.

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