GRAMMICHELE, a town of Sicily, in the province of Catania, 55 m. S.W. of it by rail and 31 m. direct. Pop. (1901) 15,075. It was built in 1693, after the destruction by an earthquake of the old town of Occhialà to the north; the latter, on account of the similarity of name, is generally identified with Echetla, a frontier city between Syracusan and Carthaginian territory in the time of Hiero II., which appears to have been originally a Sicel city in which Greek civilization prevailed from the 5th century onwards. To the east of Grammichele a cave shrine of Demeter, with fine votive terra-cottas, has been discovered.
See _Mon. Lincei_, vii. (1897), 201; _Not. degli scavi_ (1902), 223.
GRAMMONT (the Flemish name _Gheeraardsbergen_ more clearly reveals its etymology _Gerardi-mons_), a town in East Flanders, Belgium, near the meeting point with the provinces of Brabant and Hainaut. It is on the Dender almost due south of Alost, and is chiefly famous because the charter of Grammont given by Baldwin VI., count of Flanders, in A.D. 1068 was the first of its kind. This charter has been styled "the most ancient written monument of civil and criminal laws in Flanders." The modern town is a busy industrial centre. Pop. (1904) 12,835.
GRAMONT, ANTOINE AGÉNOR ALFRED, DUC DE, DUC DE GUICHE, PRINCE DE BIDACHE (1819-1880), French diplomatist and statesman, was born at Paris on the 14th of August 1819, of one of the most illustrious families of the old _noblesse_, a cadet branch of the viscounts of Aure, which took its name from the seigniory of Gramont in Navarre. His grandfather, Antoine Louis Marie, duc de Gramont (1755-1836), had emigrated during the Revolution, and his father, Antoine Héraclius Geneviève Agénor (1789-1855), duc de Gramont and de Guiche, fought under the British flag in the Peninsular War, became a lieutenant-general in the French army in 1823, and in 1830 accompanied Charles X. to Scotland. The younger generation, however, were Bonapartist in sympathy; Gramont's cousin Antoine Louis Raymond, comte de Gramont (1787-1825), though also the son of an _émigré_, served with distinction in Napoleon's armies, while Antoine Agénor, duc de Gramont, owed his career to his early friendship for Louis Napoleon.