Trapani

Trapani ( Tràpani in sicilian) is a Italian city in the province of even name in the Western part of the Sicily.

The city is known to have developed the extraction and the marketing of salt, in relation to its natural position - in edge of the Mediterranean - and its port, which was used in the past as outlet for trade at the town of Érice (Éryx), then more known and located on the mount which dominates Trapani. The other activities of the city are mainly fishing, in particular that of tuna, the extraction and the trade of the marble and the work of the coral.

The emblem

“Of red, with the bridge with three arches, the last incomplete, supporting five turns, whose the second is higher, the whole of gold, encircled of black, posed on an unstable sea of azure and money, and overcome by a sickle of gold, posed in fasce, with the handle on the right and points it turned towards the point of the ecus. ”
(Decree of August 11th, 1928)

The blazon of the town of Trapani tells its history through a precise symbolic system. The five turns represent the five first towers which defended the center of the city: the Pali tower, disappeared today, which was in the rione Casalicchio (San Pietro); the Torre Vecchia , integrated thereafter into old Palazzo Carosio, located at the angle of the street Carosio and the street of Arts ( Via delle Arti ); the tower of the Castle-of-ground ( Torre del Castello di Terra ), the highest of the old enclosure, visible tower still today behind the buildings of the Prefecture. The tower Adder finally, or Turn of the Castle of the Sea ( Torre del Castello di Mare ), known as also " Colombaia" , located on the island at the entry of the port.

The arches which support the five turns can be interpreted in two manners: they can is to represent the access doors of the city, or the old aqueduct which connected the center of the city to the sources of the countryside along current the via Archi .

The sickle with the top of the turns immediately points out the shape of forgery of the peninsula on which the town of Trapani (" is; Drépanon" in Greek, the name of the peninsula, means sickle).

Two old legends refer to the foundation of Trapani. According to the first, Trapani would have been born from the fall of a sickle of the hands of the goddess of the prosperity Déméter, left to research his/her daughter Perséphone, removed by the god of the hells Hadès.

In the second legend, one tells that Saturn, the god of the sky, killed his Chronos father with a scythe which, while falling to him with the hands, was posed on the sea and gave rise to the city. Saturn was in the Antiquité patron saint of Trapani, and one can admire still today a statue which represents it on the fountain of the piazza Saturno , in the historical center.

personalities born in Trapani

Leonardo Ximenes (1716-1786), hydraulic engineer and astronomer of Tuscany.
Holy Albert de Trapani, (1250-1306)

Monuments

Church and colleges of the Jesuits designed by the architect Native Masuccio originating in Messine.
Basilica-sanctuary of Maria Santissima Annunziata , known as Madonna of Trapani, inside whose is preserved the marble statue of the Madonna of Trapani, perhaps work of Nino Pisano
Fontaine of Triton
Église of Sant' Agostino with its splendid rosette

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