Most Recent Visit: June 2017. Now the bustling capital of the Sicily region, Palermo can trace its humble beginnings back to its founding as a Phoenician colony in 743 BCE by merchants from Tyre. Coinage suggests that the Phoenician name for the settlement was Machanath, a Phoenician word for a camp or a place of…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. Nestled in a cool valley about three kilometers to the southwest of the modern town of Piazza Armerina is the Villa Romana del Casale, a large and extravagantly decorated villa. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the villa is world-renowned for the roughly 3,500 square meters of surviving mosaic flooring, though…
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Continued From Agrigentum Part I Adjacent to the museum, to the east, is the Hellenistic-Roman Quarter of Agrigentum; several urban insulae dating to the Roman rule over the city. Most of what remains here are a total of about 20 domestic structures that seem to date to the late Republican and early imperial age. Both…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. The city of Agrigentum (modern Agrigento) was founded about 582 BCE as Akragas by Greek colonists from nearby Gela. The name Akragas came from one of two nearby rivers, the other being the Hypsas (the modern Sant’Anna River). Akragas was ruled by an oligarchic government initially, but sometime around 570…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. This post will be a bit different, as it’s kind of the mid-point between my usual schedule of updates. Because it’s just a small villa site without too much information available, and rather off the beaten path in the first place, I figured it would be better served as a…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017 The ancient town of Herakleia Minoa was founded in the middle of the 6th century BCE by settlers from Selinus probably as a means preventing expansion by Akragas (Agrigentum). The ancient remains are located near the modern village of Eraclea Minoa, and about 26 kilometers to the west of Agrigento….
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. At the westernmost tip of Sicily is the city of Marsala, and at the western most tip of Marsala is Capo Boèo, which makes up one of the three points of the trinacrium of Sicily, and the location of the ancient remains of the city of Lilybaeum. Lilybaion, a name…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. It’s not often that I’ll delve completely off the path of the Romans and do a site that doesn’t even have a period of Roman occupation. In fact, Motya was gone for over 100 years before the Romans even came to the island in force. But, I thought I’d make…
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Most Recent Visit: May 2017. Well removed from any modern settlements is the ancient remains of Segesta. Like Eryx, Segesta seems to have been one of the major settlements of the Elymian people of Sicily, and served as the political center of the Elymians. Also, like Eryx, the name of the city seems to have…
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Most Recent Visit: May 2017. Perched at a height of 750 meters, on a mountain overlooking the modern town of Trapani, is the town of Erice and the location of the ancient settlement of Eryx. Though the original settlement was probably founded by the Elymian people of western Sicily, mythological origins are also attributed to…
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