  The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the largest ground-based
observatory operating in the very-high-energy gamma-ray (20 GeV - 300 TeV)
range. It will be based on more than one hundred telescopes, located at two
sites (northern and southern hemispheres). The energy coverage, in the southern
CTA array, will extend up to hundreds of TeV thanks to 70 small size telescopes
(SST), with primary mirrors of about 4 meters in diameter and large field of
view of the order of 9 degrees. It is proposed that one of the first sets of
precursors for the CTA SSTs array will be represented by nine ASTRI telescopes.
Their prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, is installed in Italy. It is currently
completing the overall commissioning before entering the science verification
phase that will performed observing bright TeV sources as Crab Nebula, Mrk421
and Mrk 501 cross-checking the prototype performance with the Monte Carlo
predictions. ASTRI telescopes are characterized by a dual-mirror optical design
based on the Schwarzschild- Couder (SC) configuration. The focal-plane camera
is curved in order to fit the ideal prescription for the SC design and the
sensors are small size silicon photomultipliers read-out by a fast front-end
electronics. The telescope prototype installed in Italy, has been developed by
the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, INAF, following an end-to-end
approach that comprises all aspects from the design, construction and
implementation of the entire hardware and software system to the final
scientific products. All parts of the system have been designed to comply with
the CTA requirements. A collaborative effort, addressed to the implementation
of the first ASTRI telescopes for the CTA southern site, is now on-going led by
INAF with the Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brazil), the North-West University
(South Africa) and the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics.

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics