Etna’s Old Cable-Car Station Reborn as The Old Station

The former valley station of Sicily’s Etna cable car has been transformed into The Old Station, an architectural restaurant project at Piazzale Sapienza that turns a surviving piece of volcanic-era infrastructure into a destination for dining, memory and mountain tourism.

A survivor of the volcano

The building has acquired an almost mythical local nickname: Highlander. Across the Etna cableway’s 73-year history, it escaped burial by lava flows that reshaped much of the surrounding landscape, making its survival at the Sapienza departure area a rare and symbolic act of endurance.

That history is central to the project. Entrepreneur Francesco Russo Morosoli championed the station’s revival, framing the restaurant not simply as a commercial venue but as a way to preserve a place associated with generations of departures, arrivals and Etna’s volatile natural cycles.

From industrial relic to dining space

Architect Salvo Maccarrone led the conversion, reworking the old industrial station into a contemporary, immersive space that deliberately connects its built memory with the volcanic landscape outside.

The design places an open kitchen at the heart of the restaurant, making food preparation part of the visitor experience rather than concealing it behind service areas. The intention is to make The Old Station both a place to eat and a piece of interpretive architecture: a building that explains its own past while offering a new reason to linger at Etna Sud.

A new anchor at Etna Sud

The restaurant sits at the Funivia dell’Etna’s departure station on Piazzale Funivia Etna Sud in Nicolosi, one of the main access points for visitors heading toward the volcano’s upper slopes.

That location gives the project potential beyond fine dining. Etna Sud already draws visitors for cable-car excursions, crater viewpoints and guided volcanic experiences; The Old Station adds a destination venue at the point where many of those journeys begin.

Memory, tourism and regeneration

The project reflects a wider shift in mountain and volcanic tourism: rather than demolishing obsolete lift buildings, operators increasingly see them as cultural assets capable of supporting year-round visitation. At Etna, where weather, eruptions and seasonal demand can disrupt access to the upper mountain, a high-quality restaurant at the base offers a more resilient use for historic infrastructure.

For the Funivia dell’Etna, the renovation also strengthens the visitor journey. Guests can now encounter the site’s history before ascending, then return to a setting designed around local identity, volcanic drama and contemporary Sicilian hospitality.

Why it matters

The Old Station is a small-scale but telling example of adaptive reuse in Italy’s mountain-transport sector. It preserves a building that narrowly escaped destruction, gives it a viable economic future, and turns a functional relic of the cableway into part of the Etna visitor experience.

In doing so, it shifts the old station’s story from survival to reinvention: a structure once defined by what it escaped now has a purpose built around what it can offer.