MARSALA
Marsala is the town with the largest population in the province of Trapani. It lies on Cape Boeo, otherwise known as Cape Lilybaeum, at the westermost tip of Sicily. The place where the present town stands was probably a Sicanian site. At the beginning of the fourth century B.C. the Carthaginian Lilybaeum took the place of nearby Motye. Later a Roman possession and flourishing in the Middle Ages, the town derived its name from the Arab words Marsa'Ali (port of Ali). Taken over by the Normans in the twelfth century, it later passed to the House of Aragon; in the sixteenth century the importance of Marsala declined considerably as a consequence of the artificial earthing up of its port, which was done to defend the city against the constant attacks of pirates. Marsala and its commerce returned to their old splendour in the eighteenth century, when the English promoted activities and trade connected with wine production. The Iegendary Landing of the Thousand on the 11th May 1860 took place at Marsala. The Palazzo Comunale, known also as the Loggia, is an elegant eighteenth century building; its facade is marked by the combination of the colonnaded portico on the upper storey and the arcade on the ground floor. In the centre of the facade rises a clock-tower. The Duomo (Cathedral) is a seventeenth to eighteenth century building with an unfinished facade. The interior has an alsled nave and possesses various works from the workshop of the Gaginis. We should notice particularly a marble altarpiece in the chapel to the left of the presbyterv attributed to Antonello Gagini. In the right transept we can see a fine painting by Riccio (end of the sixteenth century). The Lilibeo National Museum has been set up in the Baglio Anselmi, formerly a wine factory. We can see there archaeologically valuable prehistoric materials, ancient tomb furniture, finds from Motye (especially important is the statue of a man, an original Greek marble from the fifth century B.C.), fragments from Roman times, mosaic decorations and Medieval objects. The small Church of San Giovanni rises on the site of an Early Christian baptistery, believed to have been where the Sibyl of Lilybaeum lived. It is possible to visit the grotto below, where there are a well and a Roman mosaic. The so-called Insula Romana is an area of great archaeological interest which has given up vestiges of the Roman period connected with vast rooms of the third century B.C. with abundant mosaic decorations and the remains of a small bath building. In this area and elsewhere the remains of original Carthaginian and Roman buildings have been excavated. To the north-east of Marsala, on the Island of San Pantaleo, in the so-called Stagnone, are the ruins of the town now called Mozia. Ancient Motye was, with Palermo and Solunto, one of the main outposts of Phoenician colonization in Sicily (eighth century B.C.).