ERICE
The Classical Eryx, this little town is of great interest to tourists and rises at the top of the mountain of the same name, in a setting with a spectacular landscape and views. It is known that there were already Elimian settlements in the area in the fifth century B.C.; because of its special strategic importance it was the object of recurrent conflicts from ancient times, and in particular of the wars between Greeks and Carthaginians. It was taken by the latter, together with its port of Drepanon. Destroyed by the Carthaginians in the first half of the third century B.C., when its inhabitants were transferred to Trapani, it was at the Centre of constant fighting with the Romans, who held it after 241 B.C.. In Roman times the place was much visited because the celebrated Sanctuary of the Venus of Eryx was there. The Chiesa Matrice is a church of fourteenth century origin; beside it is a powerful battlemented tower pierced by lancet windows. In front of the church, which has a fine rose-window in the middle of the facade, is an ogival-arched porch with Gothic features, added in the fifteenth century, under which we come to the very fine Gothic portal. The interior, which has an aisled nave, is the product of rebuilding in Neo-Gothic style during last century. In the right aisle, on the third altar, is a Virgin believed to be the work of Laurana (fifteenth century). The Church of San Giovanni Battista is a building of the Norman Gothic period, and preserves the original door from that time (thirteenth century). Largely remodelled in the seventeenth century, it possesses important sculptures, the most interesting of which are a St. John the Evangelist by Antonello Gagini and a Baptist by Antonio Gagini. The city walls date from various periods. There is little left of the megalithic walls of the sixth century B.C.; they were mostly rebuilt in the Roman and Norman periods. Inside the so-called "Castello del Balio" (Castle of Venus), a Norman construction of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, the few remaining vestiges of the Temple of Venus of Eryx have been found. From the crest of the precipitous rock we can admire a splendid panorama sweeping from the Cape of San Vito to Trapani below with the Egadi islands as a background, to the salt-works and Lilybaean coast toward Marsala, and to Valderice. The Pepoli Castle is surrounded by the magnificent garden called giardino del Balio, and is built on the site of the ancient acropolis of Eryx. The 'A. Cordici' City Museum is in the Municipal Palace. Its collections consist of archaeological remains from prehistoric to Roman times (there is an important Head of Aphrodite of the fifth to fourth centunes B.C.) and paintings from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. There is, finally, an interesting collection of coins, and a marbie Annunciation attributed to Antonello Gagini (first half of the sixteenth century).