Erice

Along the city walls can still be seen 3 gates called Trapani, Carmine and Spada. Porta Trapani: so named because it looks towards Trapani. It has an ogival shape and is placed between two solid bastions. Porta Spada is situated in the northern part; its name is due to the massacre of the Angevins who were […]

This public “English-style” garden was created in 1872 by the count Agostino Pepoli on the basis of an agreement with the City Administration: reclaiming a landfill area and rebuilding the towers in front of the Castle, they would have remained his own property. So the breathtaking views are the backdrop for perimeter boxes of flower-beds […]

After the Second World War some local entrepreneurs, thanks to a ceramic tradition handed down in Sicily over the centuries, started also in Erice a production of pottery, using techniques which have been passed down and tested over the years, but decorated by hand with soft colours and an original style. This kind of pottery […]

In ancient times did not throw anything away and even small pieces of cloth or old rags were reused, interweaving them on ancient and typical looms: thus the carpet in Erice is a long-established textile tradition handed down since time immemorial, which still lives thanks to the commitment and will of women that have learned […]

To the Count Agostino Pepoli (1848-1911), scholar, collector, patron, founder of the Pepoli Museum in Trapani, is owed the construction, in a suggestive and panoramic position, of the so-called Torretta Pepoli (Pepoli Turret). It is a characteristic Art Nouveau building intended to be used for the study and meditation for himself and his many friends, such […]

The Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture is located inside the building of the former Convent of San Rocco and it is dedicated to the Sicilian physicist Ettore Majorana, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances on 27 March 1938. It has promoted since 1963 international seminars, meetings and conferences which have involved more than […]

The historical testimonies indicate that where today stands the Norman castle once there was a Sican-Elymian temple on which superimposed, in Roman times, a small temple dedicated to Venus Ericina. The cult of the goddess was begun by the Sicans, who raised a small open-air “ara (altar)” in the middle of the “thèmenos”, namely a […]

On Good Friday, simultaneously to the procession which takes place in Trapani, among the typical alleys of Erice, parades, starting from the church of San Giuliano (St. Julian), a smaller but not less evocative Processione dei Misteri (Procession of the Mysteries), composed of four sculptural groups, carried on the shoulders and depicting: Jesus in the garden, […]

The cobbled streets are the original pavings of Erice: from the older pavings made exclusively of stones or simple guides, to those “square shape” designed in the 19th century by the engineer Girolamo Varjo and made of polished slabs, with an elongated hexagon shape, called chains, which frame the stones both to hold the inner […]

Spanish Quarter is a strong unfinished building, started in the 18th century to host a garrison of Spanish soldiers but never finished. Situated on a rocky spur, outside the city walls, at the western extremity of a broad rocky platform, near the churches of Sant’Orsola (St. Ursula) and Sant’Antonio (St. Anthony), Spanish Quarter of Erice […]