Marsala

Marsala

There is a point, at the far west of Sicily, where the land stretches out into the sea and Africa feels just a step away: it is Capo Boeo, the island's westernmost tip, and there stands Marsala. The Carthaginians founded it around 397 BC and called it Lilybaeum; the Arabs, centuries later, gave it the name it still bears — Marsà Allah, "harbour of God". A frontier city of the sea, made of low light, salt and wine.

Marsala is two inseparable things at once: history and wine. Here, on 11 May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed with the Thousand and lit the spark of Italian Unification. And here, a century earlier, English merchants had discovered a robust, golden wine they would make famous around the world. Among the ruins of Lilybaeum, the barrels of the historic cellars, the Stagnone lagoon with the island of Mozia and the windmills of the salt pans, Marsala is the luminous, salt-kissed finale of western Sicily.

"Here, on 11 May 1860, the Thousand landed and the expedition that would unite Italy began." And still today Marsala is the island's western gateway.
— From the city's history

The old town and the landing of the Thousand

The heart of Marsala is an elegant Baroque parlour opening onto Piazza della Repubblica, dominated by the Cathedral dedicated to Saint Thomas of Canterbury and the eighteenth-century Palazzo VII Aprile with its loggia. You enter the city through Porta Garibaldi and Porta Nuova, ancient gateways in the walls. It was right here that, on 11 May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed with the Thousand, who had sailed from Quarto aboard the steamships Piemonte and Lombardo: the event that launched the expedition for Italian Unification, now recounted through relics and memories in the Garibaldi Museum. To walk these streets is to cross two thousand years of history in just a few steps.

Lilybaeum, Capo Boeo and the archaeological park

At the tip of Capo Boeo lies the Lilybaeum-Marsala Archaeological Park, where the Punic and Roman city resurfaces. You walk along the decumanus maximus, the ancient main street, and visit the Roman Insula with the remains of a luxurious domus complete with baths and splendid fourth-century mosaics. Nearby, the Baglio Anselmi Regional Archaeological Museum guards its most precious treasure: the Punic ship, the wreck of a third-century BC Carthaginian warship, a unique witness worldwide to the naval battles fought in these waters. Here Sicily ends, and its most ancient history rises from the earth.

Marsala wine and the historic cellars

The name of this city is, the world over, synonymous with a wine. It all began in 1773, when the English merchant John Woodhouse, having put in by chance at Marsala, discovered the local wine and fortified it with alcohol so it could travel all the way to England: thus was born Marsala, golden and fortified, soon beloved even by Admiral Nelson. Following Woodhouse came Ingham and Whitaker, and in 1833 the entrepreneur Vincenzo Florio founded the cellar that would make Marsala famous worldwide. Today the wine is DOC since 1969, made with Grillo, Catarratto and Inzolia grapes in the Oro, Ambra and Rubino styles. The Florio Cellars and the other historic bagli can be visited among century-old barrels and the scent of wood and sea.

Mozia and the Stagnone lagoon

Before Marsala stretches the Stagnone, the largest coastal lagoon in Sicily, now a Nature Reserve: an expanse of shallow, luminous water sheltering four islands. The most famous is Mozia, the ancient Phoenician Mothia founded in the eighth century BC on the island of San Pantaleo, a thriving trading post destroyed in 397 BC by Dionysius of Syracuse. Brought back to light in the early twentieth century by the Englishman Joseph Whitaker — who had grown wealthy from the Marsala wine trade — the island today holds the Whitaker Museum and its masterpiece, the Young Man of Mozia, a refined Greek marble statue. You reach it by a short boat crossing, suspended between sky and water.

The salt pans, the sunsets and the flavours

Between Marsala and Trapani, along the Salt Road, the salt pans trace a landscape of geometric basins, white mounds and windmills. The Ettore and Infersa salt pans, with their sixteenth-century mill, offer one of the most beautiful sunsets in the Mediterranean, when sky and water turn pink, gold and violet. And then there is the table: fish couscous, hand-rolled busiate, pane cunzato, the fish of the Stagnone and, of course, Marsala wine, a star in the kitchen too. In Marsala the salt, the sea and the wine always end up on the plate and in the glass.

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