Place of interest

Porta Trapani, Porta Spada and Porta Carmine

Along the curtain wall three gates are currently visible, called Trapani, Carmine and Spada.

Erice

The place

Along the curtain wall three gates are currently visible, called Trapani, Carmine and Spada.

Porta Trapani: so called because it faces Trapani. It has a pointed shape and is set between two sturdy bastions.

Porta Spada, located to the north, is so called because of the massacre of the Angevins who garrisoned Erice during the War of the Vespers (13th century).

Porta Carmine, placed in the square in front of the Church of the Carmine, is surmounted by a large niche bearing a headless limestone statue of St Albert.

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Place

Basolati and Venule

The paving is the original paving of Erice’s streets: from the oldest, formed only of stones or with simple guides, to the one in panels designed in the nineteenth century by the engineer Girolamo Varjo and made of polished slabs, in elongated hexagon shape, called catene (chains), which frame…

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Place

Church of San Giuliano

According to legend, the Church of San Giuliano was built by Roger of Hauteville in 1076, to thank the Hospitaller Saint who had helped his son Jordan drive the Arabs out of the city, appearing on a white horse with a pack of dogs.

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Chiesa di Sant’Orsola (o dell’Addolorata)

Place

Church of Sant’Orsola (or of the Addolorata)

The existence of the Church is dated by local historians to the fourteenth century (1339), but it is likely that the first building dates back to the twelfth century; it underwent restorations in the fifteenth century, between 1430 and 1436, was renewed and enlarged in the seventeenth (1631), and in the eighteenth century the altars were decorated with stuccoes.

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The place

More places to discover

Basolati and Venule

Church of San Giuliano

Church of Sant’Orsola (or of the Addolorata)