A few hundred metres off the coast road that runs from Marsala to Trapani, inside the Stagnone lagoon, a flat patch of land of around forty hectares holds what is left of one of the oldest Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean. The island of Mozia, also known as San Pantaleo after the name the Basilian monks gave it in the Norman period, can be walked in a couple of hours and packs into a small space a fortified settlement of the eighth century before Christ, an open-air sanctuary, a necropolis, an archaeological museum and a lagoon environment protected as a nature reserve.

What makes the site exceptional is what happened after its fall: once the Syracusans destroyed it in 397 before Christ the settlement was never rebuilt, and the survivors founded the city of Lilybaeum, today’s Marsala, on the mainland. The Punic structures were left buried with nothing built over them, a rare situation in the Mediterranean, where almost every ancient centre has gone on being lived in ever since.

The island can only be reached by sea, on a privately run ferry service, and there are two separate tickets to pay for. The archaeological route runs mostly on dirt paths with no trees to keep visitors cool, which is why it is worth choosing the cooler hours of the day, or better still spring or autumn.

The History of Mozia: from the Phoenician Foundation to the Syracusan Destruction

Towards the end of the eighth century before Christ, sailors from the coastal cities of the Levant recognised in the Stagnone the ideal conditions for a trading station: a basin sheltered by a long sandbar, shallow water that discouraged warships, an island easy to defend and set right on the route between Carthage and the Tyrrhenian coasts. The town that grew up there, Mothia in the Greek sources, became one of the three Punic strongholds of western Sicily alongside Palermo and Solunto, with a population estimated at around fifteen thousand and an economy built on trade, pottery production and the working of purple dye.

The city walls built in the sixth century before Christ ran for more than two and a half kilometres, with square towers at regular intervals, four gates and a line that followed the perimeter of the island. The defences held for a long time, and Greek attempts at conquest broke against the combination of walls and shallow water.

In 397 before Christ Dionysius I of Syracuse laid a siege using methods technically advanced for the period: he had the submerged causeway linking the island to the mainland reopened so that mobile towers and siege engines could be brought up to the walls, and the city fell after weeks of fighting that went on street by street. The site was sacked and abandoned.

Over the following centuries the island saw only intermittent use. In the Norman period it was granted to the abbey of Santa Maria della Grotta and passed to the Basilian monks, who named it after their own saint; in the sixteenth century it became Jesuit property, while at the end of the eighteenth it turned into a fief of the Alagna family, who began the first searches for antiquities. The turning point came in 1902, when Joseph Whitaker, a member of the English dynasty that had built its fortune on exporting Marsala wine, bought Mozia and funded systematic excavation campaigns together with his collaborator Giuseppe Lipari Cascio.

What to See on the Island of Mozia: Kothon, Tofet, Walls and Punic Houses

The visitor route runs in a loop along signposted paths, with panels and maps at the main junctions; allowing for stops it takes about two hours, or three for anyone who reads the explanatory material. Starting from the landing stage and heading north, the first thing you come to is the residential area known as the House of the Amphorae, followed by the tofet, the open-air sanctuary where cinerary urns holding the remains of very young children and of animals were laid down, accompanied by carved votive stelae; the interpretation of the rite is still debated between those who read it as sacrifice and those who see it as an area set aside for infant burial.

A little further on come the archaic necropolis, with pit and box graves datable between the seventh and the sixth century before Christ, and the production area with the pottery kilns. On the northern side the sanctuary of Cappiddazzu preserves the foundations of a building on a tripartite plan, while the North Gate opens onto the submerged Punic road.

Continuing along the perimeter you pass the best preserved stretches of the fortifications, including the eastern tower with its internal staircase, and further on the House of the Mosaics, a dwelling with floors made of black and white pebbles forming scenes of confronted animals, dated to the period after the destruction and therefore linked to a late phase of occupation.

In the southern sector stands the kothon, a rectangular basin of roughly fifty metres by thirty-seven, long interpreted as an artificial dock connected to the sea. Excavations carried out by the Sapienza University of Rome have shown instead that it is a sacred pool fed by freshwater springs, set inside a temple enclosure dedicated to Baal and laid out according to astronomical alignments, with a temple facing it on the western side.

The Whitaker Museum and the Youth of Mozia

Admission to the archaeological area includes the Giuseppe Whitaker Museum, housed in the villa the English businessman had built on the island at the beginning of the twentieth century and now run by the foundation named after his daughter Delia. The rooms hold the material recovered over more than a century of digging: stelae from the tofet with the symbols of Tanit and Baal Hammon, cinerary urns, grave goods, imported Greek pottery and local production, glass paste jewellery, painted ostrich eggs used as ritual containers, terracotta masks with exaggerated grimaces that served an apotropaic purpose.

The piece that draws most visitors is the Youth of Mozia, a marble statue just under two metres tall found in 1979 during the campaigns run on behalf of the foundation. It shows a male figure wrapped in a long pleated tunic clinging to the body, the right hand brought to the hip and the drapery worked with a rendering of the fabric that reveals remarkable skill. The attribution is still argued over: the sculpture belongs to the Greek tradition of the Severe style and dates to around the middle of the fifth century before Christ, yet it was found in a Punic context, a circumstance that has fed various theories about where it came from and who it represents, read at different times as a victorious charioteer, a priest or a god.

The quality of the work has taken it abroad: it has been shown at the British Museum and in other foreign museums before returning for good to the room devoted to it. Around the villa lies a garden of Mediterranean plants and replanted vineyards, evidence of the double nature of the place, at once an archaeological site and a working agricultural property.

The Stagnone Lagoon, the Salt Pans and the Submerged Punic Road

The island sits inside the Isole dello Stagnone di Marsala nature reserve, a protected area of some two thousand hectares that takes in Isola Grande, Santa Maria and Schola, along with the stretch of lagoon separated from the open sea by the long sandbar. The average depth is around one metre and in wide areas drops below fifty centimetres, which produces warm water, high salinity and a seabed covered with meadows of posidonia.

Those same conditions have favoured salt production since antiquity, still active today along the salt road that links Marsala to Trapani: the evaporation pans, the mounds covered with roof tiles and the windmills with their wooden sails make up a working landscape that is instantly recognisable, and some of the plants organise guided tours on harvesting and processing. Sunset over the lagoon, with the windmills in silhouette, is the most photographed moment in the whole province.

Between Mozia and the mainland runs the Punic road, a paved track a little under two kilometres long built in the sixth century before Christ to connect the island with the necropolis of Birgi and the farmland behind it, today under a sheet of water that varies between fifty centimetres and a metre depending on tide and wind.

Crossing on foot is only possible in favourable conditions and with someone who knows the route, since the edges are unmarked and the seabed on either side turns muddy; most visitors simply look at its line from the northern landing stage, where the clarity of the water lets you make out the alignment.

How to Get to the Island of Mozia, Tickets and Tips for Your Visit

Getting to Mozia by car means taking the main road that climbs from Marsala towards Trapani, following the signs for the Stagnone and the salt pans as far as the jetties along the coast in the Contrada Spagnola area, where there is parking. The ferry service is run by private operators, with frequent departures in the tourist season and fewer crossings in the winter months, and the trip takes about ten minutes.

Two tickets are needed to reach the site: the crossing, which usually costs a few euros, and admission to the archaeological park and the museum, paid once you have landed and costing somewhere around ten euros, with reductions for students, young people and other eligible categories.

To see the island in comfort, carry enough water, since refreshment points are minimal, along with a hat and sunscreen, because the paths cross areas with no shade at all, and wear decent shoes, ideally walking boots. Spring and autumn offer the best conditions, with moderate temperatures and low-angled light that shows the structures at their best; in summer it is better to head over early in the morning.

Would you like to discover many more of Sicily’s unique places? Get in touch, we can put together your tailor-made trip to Sicily with a range of destinations and plenty of activities!

Escursioni

VIVI LE PIU’ BELLE ESPERIENZE IN SICILIA, ABBIAMO SELEZIONATO PER VOI LE PIU’ BELLE ESCURSIONI PRESENTI IN SICILIA. 

Alloggi

CERCHI UN HOTEL DI LUSSO, CASALI ESCLUSIVI,  VILLA CON PISCINA O B&B? SCEGLI L’ALLOGGIO PIU’ ADATTO A TE

Noleggio auto

IL NOLEGGIO DI UN’AUTOMOBILE IN SICILIA È IL MODO MIGLIORE PER SCOPRIRE LE PRINCIPALI BELLEZZE DELLA REGIONE SENZA ALCUN VINCOLO