Coast of western Sicily

Trapani

An area to discover

Trapani is a city facing the sea, gateway to western Sicily. Between salt pans, historic centre and food traditions, it offers an authentic mix of nature, culture and local experiences.

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The identity of the place

A story to live

Ancient Drepanon, with its sickle shape, stretches out towards the sea, the main source of life for fishing and for the tourist-commercial port (once a source of wealth through coral fishing). Walking through the historic centre you read the signs of the various cultural layers, from the oldest quarter, Casalicchio, to the Jewish quarter of the Giudecca, to the medieval ruins of the Castello di Terra and the Castello di Mare or della Colombaia. On the main street, the Palazzo Senatorio and Palazzo Riccio di San Gioacchino are splendid. Of interest are the churches of the Purgatorio, which houses the Misteri (twenty sculptural groups depicting the Passion of Christ), and of the Collegio. Not far from the historic centre are the Sanctuary of the Annunziata and the Museo Pepoli, which holds unmissable precious works of art. South of the city, the salt pans form the environmental unicum where the salt road itinerary begins.

To experience

Experiences to enjoy

Experience • Trapani

Spice and Mafaradda Shops

To take home a piece of this tradition: in the shops of the historic centre you can still find couscous spices and ceramic mafaradde, the same vessel used for generations to roll semolina.

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Experience • Trapani

Fish Market Square and the Trattorias of the Historic Centre

The scenic nineteenth-century exedra that for a century hosted the daily sale of the catch: today the square tells the memory of that market, while in the alleys of the historic centre family-run trattorias carry the tradition on in the kitchen.

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Experience • Trapani

Salina Grande and the Northern Stretch of the Reserve

Driving along the SP21 towards Marsala you get the first big view of the salt pan landscape: this is where the Reserve begins, on the southern edge of the city of the two seas.

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Presepe in corallo trapanese esposto in museo

Experience • Trapani

Trapani: Coral, Crafts and Baroque Wonders

A walk in the heart of Trapani dedicated to the art of coral, to its workshops and the city’s architecture.

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Piazza Mercato del Pesce a Trapani con la fontana e il porticato

Experience • Trapani

Trapani: Fish Market, Historic Centre and Street Food

A walking itinerary through market, port and historic centre to read Trapani through its catch and everyday cuisine.

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Tramonto sul mare di Trapani visto dai bastioni

Experience • Trapani

Trapani: Sunset by Boat Along the Coast

An evening sail from the port of Trapani with a view of the city, Monte Erice and the islands on the horizon.

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To experience

Places of interest

Place

Cathedral of San Lorenzo

The cathedral church of San Lorenzo has very ancient origins that go back to the year 1102; renewed in the first half of the fourteenth century, it was raised to a parish by Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1421. In the seventeenth century it was enlarged by Brother Bonaventura Certo and in 1748 took on…

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Place

Historic Centre and Old Quarters

The historic centre of Trapani, in the general picture of the history of Sicily, is an outstanding place for culture and traditions, the image of a historical, social and economic reality that has changed over time.

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Place

Church of the Jesuit College

The Church, the College and the House of the Jesuits form an evocative architectural complex that occupies an entire block between Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Via Roma, Via Tenente Genovese and Via Mancina.

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Place

Church of the Purgatorio

Built in 1688 at the wish of Don Domenico Viola, to a design by the architect Pietro Castro, between 1712 and 1714 it was enriched with the façade designed by the Trapani architect Giovanni Biagio Amico, who made it in the Roman Baroque taste of Francesco Borromini (a moving, undulating façade through…

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Place

Church of San Liberante

It was built in the early years of the seventeenth century by the Trapani coral fishermen in thanksgiving for the catch of an enormous quantity of coral that came through the intercession of Saint Liberalis or Liberante.

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Place

Church and Convent of San Domenico

The Dominicans, who arrived in Trapani in the early thirteenth century (about 1221-1229), initially settled in the Jewish quarter, in the church of the Gesù (near the Plaque of the 40 Hours).

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Place

Church of Santa Maria del Gesù

The Franciscan church, one of the most significant in the historic centre for its pleasing late-Gothic forms, was built in the sixteenth century, at the expense of the Treasury, by the Observant friars who in 1535, having been deprived of their original church of S. Maria dei Greci, demolished to widen the walls, set about building a new church with an adjoining convent…

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Chiese barocche e barocchetto alla trapanese

Place

Baroque and Barocchetto Churches in the Trapani Style

In the seventeenth century Trapani kept its loyalty to the Kingdom of Spain. While in Rome the formal solutions of great Baroque art were being defined, our city, after a stay in the late forms of sixteenth-century classicism or Mannerism, as in the church and college of the Jesuits, turned towards a chromatic, Spanish-style interpretation of Baroque taste in which tonal colour prevailed over plastic effects…

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Place

Trapani Coral

The history of Trapani coral has very distant origins, and as early as the twelfth century the Arab traveller Idrisi noted its prized quality. In the fourteenth century the discovery of a coral “mine” in the sea of Trapani (1416-1418) and near San Vito Lo Capo (1439) drew to the city some…

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Place

The Cult of Saint Francis of Paola

He is called “u santu patri”, the holy father, and the city’s sailors and seafarers are devoted to him, giving him a sacrilegious attribution, capable of denying the hagiographic hierarchies of Christian and Catholic ritual.

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Place

Giudecca or Palazzo Ciambra

The Palazzo della Giudecca, so called for its location in the city’s ancient Jewish quarter, was built in the first decades of the sixteenth century by the Ciambra family, whose coat of arms depicting a deer at the foot of a tree is set in the pointed entrance portal.

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Place

The Misteri of Trapani

In Trapani at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, thanks to the Society of the Blood of Christ, later merged with the Confraternity of San Michele (1646), the Misteri arose, statue groups depicting episodes of the Passion of Christ. This was helped by the strict provisions of the Council…

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Place

The Agostino Pepoli Regional Museum

A prestigious city institution is the “Agostino Pepoli” Regional Museum, located in the premises of the former convent of the Carmelite Fathers, of fourteenth-century origin, adjoining the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Trapani.

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Place

La Colombaia

The sea castle, commonly called La Colombaia, according to tradition was built by Hamilcar Barca, on a small island at the eastern end of the port, at the time of the First Punic War.

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Place

Holy Week

Rites, processions and religious services that combine faith, traditions and also folklore characterise the week before Easter.

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Place

Tramontana Walls and Beaches

Trapani is one of those cities where you can swim just outside its ancient walls. Starting from the flat rocks of the isthmus of Torre di Ligny, where the celebrated “Petra Palazzo” was once quarried, there are many places where you can swim, such as in the narrow beaches next to the Tramontana walls, where the characteristic “Porta Ossuna” opens, or continuing along the little beaches next to the whole urban area up to the slopes of Erice, where there are also numerous equipped bathing establishments…

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Place

Palazzo Senatorio

Placed where Via Torrearsa (formerly Via degli Scultori) crosses Corso Vittorio Emanuele (formerly Rua Grande), the Palazzo Senatorio was built on the site where the ancient Pisani Loggia stood, which is why, even today, the space in front is called Loggia.

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Place

Fish Market Square

Used until a few years ago for selling fish, with its characteristic counters, the square in its present layout shows the architectural forms given to it by the engineer Giovan Battista Talotti in 1874: a large arcaded exedra with round arches, enriched at…

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Place

Sanctuary of the Annunziata

The Sanctuary of Maria SS. Annunziata stands in the Borgo, where in the thirteenth century there was a small church dedicated to Santa Maria Nunziata, donated with the surrounding space to the Carmelite Fathers by the notary Ribaldo after their arrival in Trapani, which took place between 1224 and 1240.

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Tonnara di San Giuliano e spiaggia di punta Tipa

Place

San Giuliano Tuna Trap and Punta Tipa Beach

The “San Giuliano Palazzo” tuna trap, closed since 1961, was perhaps the first tuna trap in western Sicily. Now dilapidated, it saw its first nucleus in the construction of a defence tower and a vast quadrangular wall protecting the inner buildings from frequent pirate raids.

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Itineraries across the area

The Trapani Couscous Itinerary

Custonaci, Erice, Favignana, Marsala, Mazara del Vallo, Misiliscemi, Paceco, Pantelleria, Petrosino, San Vito Lo Capo, Trapani, Valderice

In 2020 UNESCO inscribed Maghreb couscous on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. But on this coast couscous has an older and more intimate story: it arrived with the sailors and workers who, between Mazara del Vallo and San Vito Lo Capo, traded for centuries with the Tunisian coasts…

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The Salt and Its Many Forms Itinerary

Marsala, Paceco, Trapani

As early as the twelfth century the Arab geographer Al-Idrisi described these salt pans as a treasure of the Trapani coast. Since then, for almost a thousand years, wind, sun and the shallow sea have worked together with people to turn a strip of coast into a unique landscape: pans…

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The Tuna and Tuna Traps Itinerary

Custonaci, Favignana, San Vito Lo Capo, Trapani, Valderice

Every spring, for centuries, tuna crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to enter the Mediterranean to spawn, and the Trapani coast awaited them with a system of nets, rituals and whole communities built around a single event: the mattanza. In Favignana this relationship reached its…

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The Traditional Cuisine and Local Catch Itinerary

Erice, Misiliscemi, Paceco, Trapani

There is a cuisine that does not appear in glossy guides: that of family homes, of trattorias that have kept the same name for three generations, of Sundays when grandmother made fish couscous in the ceramic mafaradda, the same one her mother used before her. This itinerary…

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Where to stay

Stay • Trapani

B&B MaryJosè

B&B

B&B MaryJosè is located on the sea, bordering the beaches and bathing establishments of the area (“Spiaggia”, “Stabilimento Balneare Lido Paradiso”, “Stabilimento Balneare Lido Rombo”), in an area of great archaeological and architectural value, in a place with a spectacular view, in the historic centre of the city.

via Passo Enea, 70 – 91100 Trapani (TP)

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Stay • Trapani

Le Cupole Suites & Apartments

Residence

A design hotel-home, a luxurious yet informal setting in the heart of Trapani. Le Cupole Suites & Apartments stands out for the spaciousness and brightness of its interiors, its modern design style, its fine materials and the high comfort of all the apartments. The building…

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Stay • Trapani

Villa Angelina Resort

Luxury resort · Historic villa

Located at the foot of Monte Erice, at the entrance to the city of Trapani, Villa Angelina is a prestigious property, an example of the grand architecture typical of the early twentieth century in the Trapani area, protected as a place of historical, artistic and architectural interest.

via Marconi, 218 – 91100 Trapani (TP)

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Stay • Trapani

Zibibbo suites & rooms

Rooms for rent · Apartment

Located in the heart of Trapani, behind the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, Zibibo Suites & Rooms enjoys a strategic position close to restaurants, shops, cafés and craft workshops. Beautiful sea-view terrace and reception open during the day.

via Libertà, 37 – 91100 Trapani (TP)

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