ERICE

Only 14,2 km from Camping LidoValderice, Erice can be reached from the Maltempo Linciasella street..

For more information on how to use this service visit the web site http://www.aziendasicilianatrasporti.it/

Erice (Eryx) (Èrici or U Munti in Sicilian) is a town of 28,880 inhabitants in the province of Trapani, on the homonymous Mount. Erice was also the name of a mythological character killed by Hercules. Until the end of World War II was called Monte San Giuliano.

According to Thucydides, was founded by the Trojan exiles, who fleeing in the Mediterranean Sea have found the perfect place to settle here; according to the legend, then the Trojans would have given life to the people of the Elimi. Erice was contended by the Syracusans and Carthaginians until the conquest by the Romans in 244 B.C.

Virgil quotes it in the Aeneid, with Aeneas touching it twice: the first for the death of his father Anchises, a year later for the games in his honor. Virgil in Canto V tells that in an age still more remote is the same Hercules to appear in the famous fight with the giant Erice, precisely in the place where then the young and presumptuous Dares challenged to basket Elder Entellus.

In ancient times, along with Segesta, which seems of coeval foundation, was the most important city of the Elimi, in particular it was the center where religious rites were celebrated.

During the first Punic War, the Carthaginian general Hamilcar ordered the fortification and so defenses Lilibeo. Later he moved a part of the population to the foundation of Drepanon, Trapani today.

The Romans venerated the "Venus Ericina", the first goddess of Roman mythology in the likeness of the Greek Aphrodite.

Since 1963, is home to the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture, established at the initiative of the professor Antonino Zichichi, which attracts the most qualified scholars in the world for scientific treatment of problems that affect several sectors: from medicine to law, from history to astronomy, from philology to chemistry. For this is called "city of science".

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