Introduction
Antonino Cardillo
Trapani. During the 12th century, after the Arab domination, whose only architectural contribution that was received by us remains the urban mosaic of the Casalicchio district, outside the city’s walls, many small islands that studded the landscape between the sky and the western sea were about to be settled by the houses of the consulates and the crusaders. This unique human landscape can only be reconstructed through imagination. To date, there are no descriptions, let alone images. However, some residues persist in the current city: there is a place built by earth tongues extended on the water, a sort of bridges, a little natural, a little artificial: They provide access to the buildings of the Lazzaretto, the Villino Nasi, and the Torre di Ligny, which echo a bit further on, a rocky strip marked at its eastern end by that strange construction, a rich source of historical spaces and signs, which the inhabitants of the city still call Colombaia, a dark resonance of the local myth of Venus Erycina and her white doves.
This text was first published in Un’architettura sulla marina di Trapani: Let There Be More Light / aquarium (pdf), thesis, Università di Palermo, March 2002, p. 5.
