Elimo-Punic Walls

Erice

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The path of the walls of Erice winds for about 800 m along the western side only and, although not known entirely, inside there are three important city gates: Porta Trapani (the southernmost) and, proceeding north, Porta Carmine and Porta Spada. This stretch of wall is marked by quadrangular towers placed at a distance of about 25 m from each other.

The visible walls, small blocks assembled with mortar, are medieval, dating from the thirteenth century, preceded by some interventions of the Roman era.

These defensive structures, however, would be attributable to several phases of construction: the first in so-called megalithic work, consisting of large blocks of local limestone at the base of the towers has been attributed to the so-called “phase elima” dated, according to chronologies proposed by several scholars between the late seventh and late sixth century BC and visible near the northernmost towers.

On these blocks there is another construction phase of the walls, characterized by regular parallelepiped blocks of medium size arranged in regular rows and dated to the mid-fourth century BC, corresponding to the Punic phase of the city.

To such phase they would go up again the ‘postierle‘, that is narrow porticine for the walkings of the guards, near which they have been recovered of the Punic letters engraved on some ashlars before their putting in work, near door Carmine. During the excavation of the walls was also found a fragment of votive stele with dedication to the Punic goddess Tanit, a North African type of the Hellenistic period, reused for building purposes.