Erice stands 750 meters above Mount San Giuliano, partly surrounded by walls and partly overlooking the extreme tip of the island, like a terrace suspended over the sea.

This promontory was chosen by the Elymians as a sacred mountain.

Who were the Elymians?

They were a very ancient people whose presence in western Sicily is testified by Greek historians of the first centuries before Christ such as Thucydides, Polybius, and Diodorus Siculus. Other evidence is also provided by the epic poems, first and foremost Virgil’s Aeneid. 

The Elymians were born from the meeting and union of two distinct populations: a people of Asian origin (probably Anatolian) who escaped from a war in their homeland and landed in Sicily in the 2nd millennium B.C. and an indigenous people, present in Sicily since prehistoric times, namely the Sicans.

The Elymians inhabited Segesta and Entella and here, on Mount San Giuliano, they built their most important sacred site. It was a temple dedicated to the goddess of fertility and love, Tanit. The sacred place was inhabited by priestesses consecrated to the goddess (called hierodules) and devoted to a ritual that may sound scandalous to the ears of us contemporaries: sacred prostitution.

Sailors from all over the Mediterranean who came to the shores of Trapani knew the presence of this shrine and of its generous inhabitants and climbed Mount Erice to join the beautiful priestesses.

Today Erice is a charming medieval town characterized by winding streets, low houses, small churches, stores and excellent pastry stores (famous are the genovesi, pastry filled with yellow custard). 

The splendid Mother Church stands in a privileged position, right at the entrance to the village, with its stone bell tower on which it is possible to climb. 

All that remains of the ancient temple of Tanit is a memory and a few traces, found by archaeologists inside the medieval castle of Erice, which, in a panoramic position, towers on a rocky spur overlooking the Sicilian countryside.