Trapani, Italy

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religious and sporting events in honor of the Madonna of Trapani, 15th Aug.).

Location

Beautifully ensconced on and close to a promontory and at the foot of Monte Erice (751m/2,465ft) in the northwest of Sicily, Trapani is a lively commercial, industrial and diocesan town as well as a port. The Old Town juts out westwards on a narrow peninsula between the harbor and the open sea, and boasts a number of historical buildings.

History

Drepanon is the Greek word for sickle or crescent. That was the name given to Trapani by the ancients because of its sickle-shaped peninsula, even though no Greeks ever settled here. In fact it was a base used by the Carthaginians, who made it into a naval port at the beginning of the First Punic War in 260 B.C. and populated it with some of the people from Eryx. In 249 B.C.

The Romans under the consul P. Claudius Pulcher suffered a heavy defeat when they tried to take the town from the sea. In 242 B.C., however, C. Lutatius Catulus succeeded in taking it and from that date it remained Roman and a port of little importance and without its own charter.

It was the ninth century A.D. before Trapani enjoyed an improvement in its fortunes under Saracen rule, when both Arabs and Jews lived in the Arab Quarter, between Via 30 Gennaio and Via Torrearsa. Trade and commerce prospered after 1077 under the Normans too. In the 15th century, under the Aragonese, the great salt-fields were laid down and these continued in existence until quite modern times before succumbing to the pressure of American competition.

In 1820-21 and 1848 there were uprisings against Bourbon rule. The town suffered badly in the Second World War.

Parallel to the north coast lies Via della Libertà, the eastern end of which, where it enters the New Town, widens out into a square, Piazzo Vittorio where the Municipio (town hall) and Prefettura (county council offices) face each other. It adjoins the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, named after Victor Emmanuel, who was King of Sardinia from 1849 and King of Italy from 1861. His memorial (1882) on the south side of the square extols him as "Re galantuomo" and "Padre della patria" (the gentleman king and father of the fatherland). It looks down on the lawns of the square and the adjacent park of the Villa Margherita with its ancient trees and many portrait busts, including those of Dante, Bellini and Piersanto Mattarella, President of the Region of Sicily, who was murdered by the Mafia in 1980; it is here that the "Luglio Trapanese" (July musical festival) is held.