1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mazzara del Vallo
MAZZARA DEL VALLO, a town of Sicily, in the province of Trapani, on the south-west coast of the island, 32 m. by rail S. of Trapani. Pop. (1901), 20,130. It is the seat of a bishop; the cathedral, founded in 1093, was rebuilt in the 17th century. The castle, at the south-eastern angle of the town walls, was erected in 1073. The mouth of the river, which bears the same name, serves as a port for small ships only. Mazzara was in origin a colony of Selinus: it was destroyed in 409, but it is mentioned again as a Carthaginian fortress in the First Punic War and as a post station on the Roman coast road, though whether it had municipal rights is doubtful.[1] A few inscriptions of the imperial period exist, but no other remains of importance. On the west bank of the river are grottoes cut in the rock, of uncertain date: and there are quarries in the neighbourhood resembling those of Syracuse, but on a smaller scale.
See A. Castiglione, Sulle cose antiche della città di Mazzara (Alcamo, 1878).
- ↑ Th. Mommsen in Corpus inscr. lat. (Berlin, 1883), x. 739.