Page 492 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

Margherita gardens. Churches and palaces have been renovated in recent years, and a

plethora of bars and restaurants has opened along stylish pedestrianized streets –
notably Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Via Torrearsa and Via Garibaldi – and the northern
seafront, above a long beach, has been considerably smartened up. However, away
from here, there’s still a scruffy, salty-old-port air to much of Trapani, its stark cubic
houses, dusty streets and wind- and sun-thrashed palms more redolent of North Africa
than Italy.

Corso Vittorio Emanuele

The old town is most elegant along Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the pedestrianized
main street, dominated at its eastern end by the pinkish marble front of the Palazzo
Senatorio, the seventeenth-century town hall. With its twin clocks separated by an
imperious eagle, it adds a touch of grandeur to the thin promenading strip, otherwise

hemmed in by balconied palazzi, a couple of Baroque churches, and the Cattedrale
on the right, with its Baroque portico, cupolas and vast interior. Dedicated to San
Lorenzo, it has a Crucifixion inside, in the fourth chapel on the right, attributed to Van
Dyck.

Changing its name along the way, the Corso runs almost to the end of the curving
promontory from which the town took its Phoenician name of Drepanon (sickle). At its

very tip is the Torre di Ligny, a squat Spanish fortification dating from 1671, now
privately owned, but a good spot for a sit-down with a sandwich. On the way back
into town, a walk down the north side of the promontory will show you what’s left of
the medieval city wall, the bastione, breached by the thirteenth-century Porta

Botteghelle.

Via Torrearsa

Back at the eastern end of Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Via Torrearsa is one of the old
town’s main shopping streets. At its southern end, the church of Sant’Agostino on
Piazzetta Saturno boasts a pretty fourteenth-century rose window of interlocking stone
bands; the church is occasionally used as a concert hall (details of performances from

the tourist office). Architecturally more appealing is the sixteenth-century church of
Santa Maria di Gesù, just to the east of Via Torrearsa, on Via San Pietro, whose two
doors display a diversity characteristic of the town, the right-hand one Gothic, the
other defiantly Renaissance.

The Jewish quarter

There’s little more to see in this part of town apart from a few unusual facades, one of

them buried in the wedge of hairline streets and alleys north of Corso Italia, at Via
della Giudecca 43, where the sixteenth-century Palazzo della Giudecca sports a