Trapani - rich of evidence of the Greek, where it got its original name "Drépanon", which means "sickle" because of the curving shape of its harbour, and Elymian, Phoenician, Roman, Arabian and Spanish time. Trapani was founded by the Elymian and became a small seaside town during the population of the Phoenicians. The town had to endure some tyrannical domination during the occupation of the changing conquerors over the centuries, like assisting the great naval battel between the Carthaginians and the Romans in 248 BC with defeat of the roman float and the town being punished by latter when it came back, to occupy the already weakend Trapani, in the battle of the Aegates in 241 BC in the waters of Levanzo, leading the First Punic War to a quick end. The town recuperates, after numerous Barbaric invasions during the domination of Western Roman Emperor, and Trapani gains back on splendor under the domination of the Arabs who began their occupation of Sicily in 827, who marked the town in introducing new fishing techniques, bringing the port back to a trading centre, architecture, agriculture, language and cuisine.The Arabs surrounded the city with a big town wall which was maintained by the Normans . The city became a stopover for the Spanish Pietro di Aragona during the Crusades in the 13th Century, and 1817 Trapani becomes one of the province capitals of Sicily.

Between Trapani and Marsala the land falls only imperceptibly out to the sea, and in the shallow mud flats there were from time immemorial natural lagoons that fell dry in the summer. Saltcrusts remained. The history of the salt begins in the Phoenician time who saw the favorable conditions and created artificial lagoons where the seawater evaporates and gradually thickens to layer or brine of salt to be then directed into the next basin(lagoon). With the invention of the Archimedes-Screw, by the Syracuse Archimedes, the transportation of the salt to the next basin got simplified.

The Stagnone Lagoon 

Along the road Trapani Marsala, about 20 km from Trapani, in the stretch between Punta Alga and S. Teodoro, meet the saltpans and the windmills, the lagoon of Stagnone. The lagoon, the biggest in Sicily (2000 ha) is a Natural Reserve Oriented since 1984, a natural habitat of great environmental value. It's characterized by very shallow and very salty water which encouraged the emerging of high concentraded saltspots due to elevated temperatures and windy climate, leading to ideal conditions to set up saltworks along the coast, most of them in disuse now, but some mills are still preserved. The salt pans have created a unique environment which supports not just an economic activity but also wildlife such as wild duck and herons.The waters of the Stagnone are rich of flora and fauna and is home of different kinds of fish and molluscs. Adding the climate and the vegetation it's not unusual to sight rare birds, not to be found everywhere, like flamingos and storks, making stop, from one migration to another.The lagoon includes four islands: Isola Longa or Grande (the largest), Santa Maria, San Pantaleo (Motya) and the smallest Schola.