Castelvetrano

Castelvetrano sits in the Belice valley, fifteen kilometers from the south coast of Trapani province. Within its municipal territory lies Selinunte, founded in the seventh century BC by Greek settlers from Megara Hyblea, named for the wild parsley that still grows on the site, and now the largest archaeological park in Europe at 337 hectares of Doric temples, walls and necropoleis. The town itself developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; its centro is built around the Sistema delle Piazze, three linked squares (Garibaldi, Umberto I and Cavour) framed by the sixteenth-century Chiesa Madre with stucco work by Antonio Ferraro and Gaspare Serpotta.

The Civic Museum holds the Efebo di Selinunte, an 85-centimeter bronze cast around 470 BC, one of the rare authentic Greek originals in Sicily. Castelvetrano produces Nocellara del Belice DOP table olives and the pane nero, baked from autochthonous tumminia and rusulidda grains in wood-fired ovens, grain found in noble tombs at Selinunte.