The historic centre of Castellammare del Golfo

The historical centre of Castellammare occupies the site of the ancient “emporium segestanum”, the harbour of Segesta, where the Elimis practiced their commerce with foreign ships. The city is located on the slopes of the steep peak Stagnone, up to the Tyrrhenian sea through an urban regular network culminating with the seafaring medieval village which ends toward the sea with the castle that trace back to the Arab - Norman period. It is 40 (forty) Km from Palermo and as many from Trapani.

The Arab-Norman Castle

The history of Castellammare del Golfo, as already mentioned, identifies itself with that of Segesta, since of this suffered the same circumstances. In perennial conflict with the Greeks of the near Selinunte, Segesta always gravitated around the Punic power that made the emporium Segestanum one of the most important fortified site of the northern basin of Sicily. The Arabs connotated the center - renamed Al Madarig that means staircase - as an impregnable stronghold, by means of the construction of the fortress and as pole of great commercial importance, with the installation of a “tonnara” and a loading-silo for wheat.

The first fortified nucleus

The Angevins were strengthened in the castle and they made it their operative base, because it was the most important fortress of the western part of Sicily. Frederic the Second, of Aragon, in 1316 took possession of the castle, destroyed the its walls demolished its fortifications. Nevertheless, the beautiful staircase stone made of the ancient castle, and the tower that it contains remained.

The second centre and the modern expansion

In fifteenth century, the castle was provided of two embatled towers: one called of S. George and the other of the Bell. The present tower was built in 1586, when, to defend the coast from the pirates, a lot of towers was raised along the coast. In the sixteenth century, a second walled suburb was realized with a planned programme of urbanization.

The historical cartography

Maps clearly show the exceptional position that this castle occupied and that had been already underlined by Arab travellers, particularly by Idrisi in the famous “Libro di Ruggero” written in the first half the XII century. In the cartographies of sixteenth century and the second half of seventeenth appears the strengthening that the fortress achieves on the top of the rock. Sketch of Tiburzio Spannocchi, a senese architect that, before Camilliani, was responsible for the coastal fortification plan the Turkish piracy. Especially in the perspective map of the Merelli of the 1677 one can clearly see the urban plan, with the two parts composing the inhabited area and the constructions out of the walls. On the left we can see the castle, with the medieval village, the two defence towers and the bridge of stone, that once was drawbridge. In foreground the loading-silo of the wheat, the “tonnara” still working some decade ago and the monastery of the Cruciferis. The bridge overcame the moat carved in the rock and introduced toward the new city, of sixteenth century foundation, surrounded by boundaries and endowed of a bridge of access.