House of Columns
A sixteenth-century house facing Erice's former market square
The House of Columns is a sixteenth-century residence in Erice, named for two surviving corner columns and facing the town's former market square.
Key facts
Site type:
Comune:
House
District:
Historic centre
The House of Columns is a sixteenth-century building named for two slender corner columns marking its western façade, facing the stepped Via Colonna. The surviving house was once part of a much larger patrician property, subsequently divided over time.
The former estate extended along the southern side of the block towards an inner courtyard, where a portal survives among other sixteenth-century architectural elements. Its arch is decorated with distinctive diamond-shaped tufa bosses. On the northern side of the same block is another unusual doorway, formed from a single large slab of limestone incorporating its jambs, threshold and lintel.
This northern entrance also connects the house with another aspect of Erice's history: it faced the market square. The small space across Via Albertina degli Abbati, beside the Church of San Martino, continued to be known as Piazzetta del Mercato until it was renamed Piazzetta Professor Vincenzo Adragna in 2000.
Little is currently known about how the market operated, when it developed or precisely what was sold there. Its former name nevertheless preserves evidence of an everyday commercial function largely absent from the historic centre today — and provides a starting point for exploring how the mountaintop town was supplied with food.
Photo: Elymian Atlas
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The market square
The former Piazzetta del Mercato occupied the small space immediately north of the House of Columns, around the junction of Via Pietro Salerno and Via Albertina degli Abbati, beside the Church of San Martino.
Although its historic function is poorly documented, both architectural evidence and municipal toponymic records identify it as the town's former market square. The latter confirm that Piazzetta del Mercato remained its name immediately before its renaming in 2000.
The square was dedicated to Vincenzo Adragna, an Ericine historian whose research included the economy of eighteenth-century Erice. His archival work documented the pastoral economy of the Agro Ericino, the extensive countryside historically administered from Monte San Giuliano.
A stone structure survives between the former market square and the adjoining Piazza San Martino and is sometimes identified locally as an old banco del pesce (fish counter). Its original function has not yet been confirmed by documentary evidence.
Today the former market space also contains a statue of San Pio da Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), beside the Church of San Martino. The date and circumstances of its installation, and any direct connection with the church, have not yet been established.
Feeding Erice
Historic Erice was the centre of an agricultural territory extending far beyond the summit town. Historical accounts describe vineyards and olive trees on Monte Erice, while later records document agriculture and extensive pastoral activity throughout the Agro Ericino.
Eighteenth-century municipal records reveal a landscape of communal grazing grounds, massarie, livestock, wells and watering places. Large areas belonging to the Università di Monte San Giuliano were leased for grazing, making pastoralism an important part of the local economy. Surviving massarie, animal troughs, wells and other structures recorded during the twentieth century preserve physical evidence of this pastoral landscape.
The Agro Ericino was also closely connected economically with nearby Trapani. Historical records identify produce reaching Trapani from Erice and its countryside, including poultry, honey, dairy products and snow.
How produce from the surrounding countryside was distributed within the summit town — and what role Piazzetta del Mercato played in its sale — is not yet documented.
Meat and the municipal slaughterhouse
The history of slaughtering provides a clearer glimpse of how food was once handled within Erice itself. For a long period, slaughtering took place in Piazza della Loggia, in premises facing the Torre dei Giurati. An activity now normally separated from civic and residential areas therefore once took place at the administrative heart of Monte San Giuliano.
In 1748, a municipal slaughterhouse was established against the town walls near the outer northern corner of Porta del Carmine. By the end of the nineteenth century these premises were inadequate, and in 1896 municipal engineer Andrea Borruso designed a new purpose-built slaughterhouse. The project incorporated contemporary approaches to the organisation of the premises while also giving attention to the building's architectural appearance.
The new slaughterhouse entered service in the early twentieth century but proved too large for the needs of a resident population already in decline and was never intensively used. Changes in the production, marketing, transport and preservation of meat subsequently reduced its usefulness until the facility eventually closed.
Together with the former market square, this history provides a glimpse of the practical systems that once supplied and fed the mountaintop town.
Sources & further reading
These sources document the architecture of the House of Columns, the former market square, and the agricultural and food economy of historic Erice and the Agro Ericino.