— Castellesi
Marsala sits on Sicily's westernmost point, on the site of Punic Lilybaeum , looking across the lagoon to the salt pans and the island of Mozia.
On 11 May 1860 Garibaldi and the Thousand came ashore here, and the campaign that ended the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies began. For a researcher that date is more than symbolic — it marks the boundary between two record-keeping regimes.
Italian is standard. Sicilian is widely represented in local speech and culture.
Lilybaeum was founded by Carthaginians in 397 BC and was the last Punic stronghold in Sicily, holding out against Rome for a decade. The Arabs called the harbour Marsa Allah , and from that the modern name descends.
What made Marsala known everywhere was wine . In 1773 the English merchant John Woodhouse shipped a fortified local wine to England, where it competed with Madeira and Port; Benjamin Ingham and later Vincenzo Florio built the industry into something enormous. The great baglio wineries along the seafront were English and then Sicilian commercial dynasties, and they employed a large part of the town.
On 11 May 1860 Garibaldi landed here with the Thousand , under the guns of the Bourbon navy and, by tradition, in the shelter of British merchant shipping. Within months the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had fallen and Sicily was part of a united Italy.
The town was heavily bombed in 1943 during the Allied campaign.
Offshore lies Mozia , the Phoenician island city excavated by the Whitaker family — another of the English wine dynasties — and one of the most complete Punic sites anywhere.
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Discover the beauty, culture and traditions of Trapani and its remarkable comuni.
EXPLORE TRAPANI →From the mountains to the sea, Sicilia is a region of history, flavor and soul.
EXPLORE SICILIA →From the passenger index
At least 2,208 people who gave Marsala as their home are recorded by name among Italian arrivals in the United States — each with the ship they sailed on and the day they landed.
A floor, not a total. The index covers arrivals through 1912, holds nothing between May 1907 and December 1911, and many passengers were written down with no home town at all. Where a name is there, it is there with its record.
Have Orso look for your family →The nearest major airport is Trapani Birgi Airport.
Marsala is a pleasant, prosperous town with a compact baroque centre, a long seafront of wine bagli , and a great deal of countryside behind it.
For a descendant the two things to seek are the contrada your family came from — the rural districts spread far inland and each has its own character — and the wine estates , if that was the family trade.
Mozia , on its island in the Stagnone, is reached by a short boat crossing and is among the most atmospheric archaeological sites in Sicily. The salt pans run north toward Trapani.
Trapani is half an hour, Mazara del Vallo twenty minutes south, and Palermo about two hours.
The historic wine bagli — the coastal cellars of the Marsala trade.
Mozia and the Stagnone — the Phoenician island, its museum and the Giovinetto statue.
The Punic ship museum — the Lilybaeum warship raised from these waters.
Porta Garibaldi and the landing site — where the Thousand came ashore in 1860.
The salt pans — running north along the lagoon.
Your family's contrada — the rural districts inland, which is where most Marsalesi actually lived.
Your family's parish — the record-keeping institution before 1820.
Archives and registers
The journey does not end at the boundary of one comune. The province, the region and the neighbouring towns often hold the rest of the picture.
Marsala is more than a place on a map. It is a part of you.
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