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The Madonie UNESCO Global Geopark is located in Sicily, in the middle of the Mediterranean region, among the most beautiful landscapes of special interest from a geologic and geomorphologic, as well as from a didactic, point of view. In the course of time there has been no guide to Sicily or Italy that has not devoted tens of pages to the Madonie. It represents nearly all aspects of Sicilian geology, has a very complex history that started over 220 million years ago, and is mainly composed of dolomitic limestone evoking unknown and vanished worlds. Interesting karstic morphologies, both at surface and underground, developed more recently, 23,5 million years ago. Its position in the central portion of the Sicilian Apennine, its geological-structural arrangement and the morpho-dynamic processes acting in it make this mountain group a fundamental area for knowledge and reconstruction of the geological history of the Apennine-Maghrebine chain and hence of the central Mediterranean. Because of these characteristics, the Madonie have constituted and continue to constitute an exceptional study area, as well a teaching “gymnasium” for generations of university students in geological sciences and natural history. The area contains seven type formations accepted by the international scientific community and more than forty geosites. Recent tectonics also make the area an excellent training ground on geo-hazards. The Madonie UNESCO Global Geopark also preserves a very rich and rare natural heritage. In a very small area, about 2 percent of the surface area of Sicily, over half of the species of the most evolved flora grows: about 2,600 plants, almost the same number as the species present in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. In Madonie there are also hundreds of endemic plants which are unique in the world; often there are very few exemplars of these, so that they risk extinction. The best known and most "courted" is the Nebrodi fir, but there are plenty of others. Equally interesting are the signs left by man in the landscape: fields, watercourses, village and hamlets bear witness to the thousand ways in which communities have lived in Madonie, leaving indelible prints there and expressing the intrinsic reasons of a culture.