We got on a flat boat to take us over to the island of Mozia. It is currently a privately owned archeological site. Originally, Carthaginians, who were the descendants of the sea faring Phonetians (coming from modern Lebanon) settled here. It is an island town, in a lagoon, with defensive walls and a port that prospered for centuries. Even though the surrounding water is salt water, the island thrived because it has an underground river of fresh water. Settled sometime between the 8th and 5th centuries BC, it became a thriving city of 10,000 people. The Carthaginians were talented craftsman who specialized in textiles, jewelry, ivory, glazed tile and glass. They traded all over the known world and one of their exports was a unique dyed red/purple cloth. It was so expensive that the museum curator said that is how red clothing became a symbol of power and the rich.
The town and island were abandoned when it was sacked by the Greeks in 397BC. The island we were visiting is circled at the bottom left. Trapani at the top center is where we were staying for a couple of nights.
Over the centuries that followed, there were just a few small settlements here or there, but other than monks in the Middle Ages, it never had a town again. In 1906, it was bought by Giuseppe Whittaker, an amateur collector and archaeologist, who started excavations. The Whittaker foundation still exists and that is what runs the current island and excavations. The museum was small and luckily we had a guide to help us through it. The following 3 pictures are what I found the most interesting. Top one is a Greek marble statue, the second a mask showing both happy and sad, and the last, grave stone markers.
We wandered around the museum, excavations, island and had a picnic lunch there. It was a beautiful place and made me reflect upon that even thousands of years ago, people successfully existed in a complicated society and traded across the known world.
Here’s Christine ready to look at the ruins that are shown on the next 2 pictures.
Above and below are beautiful mosaics that are next to ruins of a home and a public building.
Now that Christine had fun looking at those, we headed up over the small rise….
And saw beautiful cacti…
More ruins of a port gate…
Ruins of the monastery with red poppies growing around it…
A great big ancient fig tree…
Grapes grown in bush style rather than on vines…
Another beautiful cactus…
Yeah!!! Picnic lunch. After exploring the Island and ruins, we were rewarded with a very tasty picnic lunch (wine is not pictured) Olives, pasta, sandwiches, breads and fruit for desert! Perfecto!
After a great couple of hours, we headed away from Mozia
Saw one or two kite surfers…
And headed to a Salt Museum to learn more about the salt flats that were all around us. These are very shallow sections that sea water is directed into and then the sea water evaporates to be able to harvest the salt.
The salt flats were and are very important. Sea Salt is collected and harvested here every year. Salt flats are also an important migratory route between Africa and Europe. Many rare birds are found and interestingly, flamingos migrate through here. You have all heard the stories of flamingos turning pink because of the shrimp they eat-well, that is here! In the salt flats as the temperature rises a red algae forms. The red algae is eaten by the shrimp and then the shrimp are eaten by the Flamingos. Unfortunately we didn’t see any flamingos because it wasn’t migration season.
Both above and below pictures show different angles of the salt flats.
Above is a pile of sea salt, during the harvest at the end of summer, they are all over. Below is a pile of sea salt covered with tiles. They do this so the rain will not ruin the salt. Just like farmers, rains can ruin the harvest both before and after the salt is harvested.
We visited a small family owned museum to learn more about the salt harvest. This family had salt flats, a museum and a restaurant. Salt collection/harvest is very important for economy of the area and they have collected it for thousands of years. Each successive society that took over the area did it and added their expertise. For example, Arabs introduced windmills, and they have found evidence of salt collection in the stone ages - Paleolithic area. This was the only way to preserve food before refrigeration. In Italian, salt is “sale” (and extrapolating from that, where the word salary comes from). Wasting salt was a bad omen.
Christine is on her way to learn all about the process - I followed along of course.
Salt flats have clay on bottom and it is windy and sunny here at the salt flats, so it evaporates quickly. If the salt is harvested by hand, it is cleaner and less processed. If harvested by machinery, the clay gets mixed in with the slat and it has to be processed and cleaned more. Salt always grows in summer. Salt season starts in early May, then harvest in July and August. It breaks apart like ice. If the sea salt is harvested by hand it still has the magnesium and iodine. When harvested by machinery, the good minerals are all stripped out. Hand harvesting is very very hard work. The pictures below show the methods and hard work. It is a lot like breaking up ice, but in the very hot sun. It is a very physical job.
Who knew there was so much to learn about sea salt! Similar to farm laborers, I never think of how the salt/food gets to the table, wow!
Onward to Trapani! We stayed 2 nights in the cute seaside town of Trapani. I circled it on the map-west coast of Sicily.
There was a nice seaside walk along the city walls. You could take steps down to the beach in several areas.
Here, we found where giants once lived!
The streets were full of restaurants and shops and as you see below, odd wooden thing rolled along on the street.
This bronze plate was on one of the many church’s gate.
Christine and I stopped in a unique church, that we heard about. This church had large life sized scenes from what I would call the stations of the cross. I think they may have called them the mysteries (don’t quote me on that). The unique thing about these is that each scene was paid for and commissioned by each of the guilds - for example the fisherman’s guild - and was just made out of wood and plasters and paid for by the middle class and poor of the city. This was 400 years ago and some of them have never had to be restored. Each Good Friday they start a procession with carrying each of these, slowly around the city until Easter Sunday. They are to this day, attended by the same guilds that helped to create them.
Look behind these scenes and you will see big poles leaning on the walls. This is how they are carried around town.
While some of these scenes and figures have had extensive restoration due to bombings in the 1940’s. Others have had little to no work done. The scene above, has never been restored and is the original work.
If you look closely at the picture above, in the middle of the crowd you can see four of the scenes being carried.
One last look at the beaches of Trapani and the flag of Sicily!!!
Onward to our next stop.
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