Description : Èrice ( Èrici or U Munti in Sicilian ) is an Italian town of 26 387 inhabitants of the free municipal consortium of Trapani in Sicily . From 1167 to 1934 it had the name of Monte San Giuliano . In the city center which is located on the summit of Mount Erice , there are only 1024 inhabitants (population that increases tenfold in the summer), while most of the population is concentrated downstream, in the town of Casa Santa , contiguous to the city of Trapani . Erice's name derives from Erix , a mythological character, son of Aphrodite and Bute , killed by Heracles . Named Gebel-Hamed during the Arab occupation (from 831 until the Norman conquest of the island), the mountain was probably not even inhabited during this period. Repopulated the new citadel with the name of Monte San Giuliano , thus renamed by the Normans in the twelfth century, it also acquired prestige with the construction of new civil and religious buildings, becoming one of the largest state-owned cities of the Kingdom, thanks also to the concessions obtained on the basis of a false document , signed by Frederick II, used by its inhabitants as a certificate of legitimacy for the occupation of the vast territory that stretched from Mount Erice to the borders of Trapani, and towards the east as far as San Vito Lo Capo and the neighboring city of Castellammare del Golfo. Erice owes its rebirth to the War of the Vespers , becoming the fortress from which the war actions of Frederick of Aragon , king of Sicily until 1337, sprang . Sant'Alberto , who preached the action against the Angevins, was descended from the Abbots, one of the major families of the city. In the period of the Spanish domination some very ferocious popular uprisings are to be remembered: in 1516 , on the occasion of the death of Ferdinand the Catholic , a revolt broke out which was harshly suppressed by the baron of Castellammare; in 1544 , when Giuseppe Sanclemente, baron of Inici, arrived in Erice to review the militias of the city, a tumult broke out and the most seditious citizens had to be imprisoned; in 1624 , the year in which the city was struck by the plague, a large section of the population rose up against the captain of arms of the time, Baron Nicolò Morso, who had alienated the sympathies of the population with his authoritarian policy. In this era the Madrid government proceeded twice - in1555 and in 1645 - to the sale of the city with its territory, but on both occasions the citizens managed to redeem themselves. The monastic life, with numerous monasteries founded and endowed by conspicuous local families, characterizes city life. Starting from the 16th century , the representation of the mysteries takes place on the occasion of Good Friday , contemporary to that of Trapani . The wealth of the families who lived here until the Bourbon reform of Tommaso Natale, which - in fact - undermined the system on which the economy of the state-owned cities had been based up to then, is testified by the numerous palaces and stately homes that overlook on the streets of the city. The approximately one hundred families that in the 700 years of life of the city participated in the management of power (captains, jurors, magistrates) have left testimony of their vitality. The nineteenth-century restructuring of the central square that was known as the Loggia, later dedicated to Umberto I, to return to its original name in 2012, caused the loss of the plaque that proudly recited the economic effort that the free citizens of Erice had paid to the re so as not to be enfeebled by anyone.
See on map »