Archaeological Expedition to Motya

The Sapienza University is active in Motya over forty years with an Archaeological Expedition that marked the history of studies on the ancient Mediterranean (from 1964 to 2001, directed by Antonia Ciasca, and since 2002 by Lorenzo Nigro). Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, on the western tip of Sicily, Motya was first a Phoenician port and later it was a Punic town in western Sicily, after the rise of Carthage as hegemonic center of the Mediterranean in the sixth century BC.

Surrounded as other Phoenician maritime centers in a unique ecosystem in the middle of the Lagoon of Marsala, a sort of great natural harbor, with different available resources (agricultural products, fish, salt, etc..) Motya remained for several centuries (VIII-IV) a center for thriving, holding beneficial relationships and ongoing with the Elimi hinterland (Erice, Segesta) and developing fruitfully compared with the Greeks of Sicily (Selinunte, Agrigento, Himera), even after the violent destruction of the city by the Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse in 397 BC.

From the archaeological point of view Motya was and is one of the most fruitful and promising laboratories for research in the Mediterranean Sea, having preserved almost intact for an extension of 45 hectares and having returned a wealth of antiquities and works (just think of the sculptures or numerous discoveries of Tophet).

The Sapienza University new researchs - focusing on the study of the walls, the acropolis and the Kothon, led to the discovery of a new temple of considerable size, of a patrician residence with adjoining chapel and the walls of a fortress on horseback, completely destroyed by a violent conflagration.