Page 528 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP SELINUNTE; CERAMICS, ERICE; MARSALA WINE

Museo Archeologico

Lungomare Boeo • Tues–Sun 9am–7.30pm • €4 • 0923 952 535

One of the stone-vaulted warehouses that line the lungomare contains the Museo
Archeologico, mostly dedicated to a very skeletal but still surprisingly well-
preserved warship from the classical period. Displayed in a heat- and humidity-

regulated environment, it ranks as the only extant liburnian, a specifically Phoenician
or Punic warship, probably sunk during the First Punic War in the great sea battle off
the Egadi Islands that ended Carthage’s rule of the waves. It was discovered in 1971
and brought here after eight years of underwater surveying by a British team working