The ancient Selinunte, one of the most beautiful archaeological sites in Sicily and interesting. Founded by colonists from Megara Hyblaea, seconded by ECHO Pammilos, during the seventh century. BC, Selinunte took his name from Selinon, a term which was designated the appio, a sort of wild parsley by 'intense fragrance when in bloom, that grew plentiful in the area. The Selinon also appears on the first coins minted by the city.
In the last decades of the VII and VI throughout the century until the beginning of V, there were subsequent immigration of settlers megaresi with the founding of other colonies in western Sicily, Eraclea Minoa between them.
The ancient city, it experienced 200 years of glory that may be due to the action of a government of tyrants noticed that you have followed. The prosperity of the city is evidenced by a public and sacred area that extends into three distinct areas.
At the beginning of the fifth century, during the war between Greeks and Carthaginians in Sicily (which ended with the battle of Himera in 480), Selinunte preferred alliance with Carthage, where he hoped to obtain support to counter the rival Segesta. But in his 409 was destroyed by the Carthaginians of Hannibal, who used the means and measures ferocious: according to Diodorus Siculus were sixteen thousand deaths Selinuntines and five thousand prisoners. The supplication of the survivors to leave them free and to save the temples of the city behind to pay a high sum, Annibale accepted, but once the ransom was in hand, plunder temples and destroyed the walls.
Jean Houel: Ruines d'un temple de SélinonteSelinunte, subjected to the dominion of the Carthaginians until the Punic War, was rebuilt and fortified: Acropolis archaeological remains have a village mixed Punic and greek and almost all homes as tentative intersected Punic tombs from the Hellenistic necropolis belonging to a sort across the northern part of Manuzzi between the second quarter and second half of IV century a. C., Terragni with tombs, a slab, a Capuchin or lined with dry-laid stone cutting. The lack of craft in the peripheral area of the city advances the hypothesis that the area given its location to the north, may have had at that time purely strategic as far as the Carthaginians, at the end of III century a. C, Rasero permanently in place to not have it fall into the hands of the Romans, by transferring a population of Lylibeo Selinunte. Small community attended the acropolis in the Arab and Byzantine times. Then, Selinunte was lost even its name.
In reality, the true origin of the definitive abandonment of Selinunte is not yet fully understood.
Scattered in a semi-desert, since the site is no longer inhabited, the temples in ruins again raised to heaven their massive columns, and buildings, reduced to a pile of stones, probably due to an earthquake, which occurred presumably in X or XI century. create an impression of extreme desolation.
In the second half of the sixteenth century, the ancient city was rediscovered by the historian Thomas monaco Dominican Fazello who correctly identified the location, but only in 1825 began the first excavations of Selinunte by two British architects, Harris and the Angels I discovered that some of the metopes that are found at the Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo. Since then continued almost without interruption and continue even today, given the vastness of the area, most of the city is still below ground.
In the archaeological site of Selinunte, very large and very impressive given the proximity of a sea, there are three zones:
- The first, on the eastern hill, brings together three great temples of which one was raised in 1957.
- The second, on the western hill and surrounded by walls, is the Acropolis, north of which stood the city itself.
- The third, to the west of the Acropolis, across the river Modione, was another area with sacred temples and shrines.
To remember the two Necropoli (Manicalunga and Galera Bagliazzo).
See also: Dove mangiare.... Dove dormire ....
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![[Parco Archeologico di Selinunte]](public/luoghi/selinunte.jpg)
