For millennia, the Sicilian people have seen the mystery of Nature, generating and destroying at the same time, a benign, fertile mother, and a cruel, ruthless enemy in Mount Etna, the highest active volcano in Europe. The “Mungibeddu”, as it is called in dialect, the “column of the sky” that Pindar sang, covers the soil with its lava flows, since immemorial time, with a particularly fertile ashy blanket, whose mineral virtues propitiate excellent crops, from citrus fruits to pistachios from Bronte, not to mention a wine production, third in Italy for consistency and increasingly appreciated internationally. “Monaci delle Terre Nere”, an exquisite Country Boutique Hotel & Wine Resort included in the Relais & Chateaux list, embodies the essence of this world defined by sharp, primordial, luminous and telluric contrasts. Housed on the slopes of the volcano, in a seventeenth-century archbishop’s residence, it has been an agricultural estate for almost four centuries where excellent organic vegetables, fruit and wines are produced. Here rural life spontaneously blends with a distinct, aristocratic style, clearly visible in the delicacy that distinguishes the delightful accommodations, the dishes of the “Locanda Nerello”, the numerous activities to discover the area. A “slow living” with ancient, deep roots.