Visit Castello di Venere, Erice, Sicily, Italy

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The Castello di Venere (Castle of Venus) is a striking castle ruins featuring a 12th-century Norman fortress built over the ruins of a temple elimo-Phoenician-Roman. For the construction of the medieval fortress by the Normans , fragments of the ancient sanctuary were also used, as well as the Roman temple. The fortress was "royal square" for the Aragonese viceroys until the 16th century. With the Bourbons it became a prison. In the early decades of the nineteenth century it passed to the municipality, which at the end of the century gave it in concession to Count Agostino Pepoli in exchange for a restoration. Archaeological excavations were carried out in search of the temple from the Cultrera in 1934-36. Most of the findings are preserved in the Pepoli Museum in Trapani. The castle was connected to the rest of the summit by a drawbridge, later replaced by the current steps. The façade of the castle, turned to the west, is dominated by Ghibelline merlons, and the wall of the complex follows, with recesses and protrusions, the contour of the cliff. The entrance to a secret tunnel can be observed, which was subterranean to the buildings that had disappeared and led out of the castle. In the steep rock wall, in the north, rises a wall, attributed to Daedalus , composed of twelve horizontal rows of neatly squared stones overlapping opus rectum. .

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