About fifty kilometers from Palermo, the seaside resort of Trappeto is located on the coast, in the Gulf of Castellammare.
This town is known not only for its beautiful beaches such as San Catald bayo, Toll booth , Ciammarita, also for a significant cultural and social work carried out by the writer Danilo Dolci until the day of his death.
The denomination Trappetum Cannamelarum from which the current name derives trappeto, originated from the construction - which took place towards the end of the fifteenth century - of a first factory made for the extraction and refining of cane sugar. Right next to this first establishment was later added a fortified tower in aquascape Arab-Norman as they are found in various places in the Sicilia: an essential element during the clashes between Christians and Saracens both as a lookout point and as a defensive bulwark.
The construction of the factory was commissioned by a wealthy landowner, a certain Francesco Bologna, who made an impressive fortune throughout the sixteenth century.
The foundation of Trappeto
The foundation of trappeto it must be connected to the will of Frederick II of Aragon who in the fifteenth century had it built alongside the Partenia forest as a starting point for his hunting trips. Subsequently that territory belonging to the royal state property also developed as agricultural center and as a place of fishery.
In the XNUMXth century, however, the inhabitants left Trappeto to return only at the end of the following century with the sole purpose of cultivate the vine and only at the beginning of the XNUMXth century were houses built close to the old one Church of the Annunziata.
However, Trappeto's story is viscerally connected to that of Balestrate, a nearby town built in the same territory where other small municipalities would also arise, all acquired by law - at the beginning of the fourteenth century - from the royal property of Frederick II, king of Aragon. Original was how these were delimited: in fact, as reported by Domenico Tuzzo in a writing by him, these had their limits set with a crossbow shot which determined the boundaries so much that that area was known as Lands of the Crossbows and this toponym gave rise to the denomination of Balestrate.
The origins of Trappeto
The origins of trappeto they are due to the deprivation of its territory which took place in 1456. The existence of Trappeto was not always marked by serenity, which also saw the forced unification with Borgo Sicciara which took place in 1820 with a Decree of King Ferdinando I di Barbone. Situation, this, which was never accepted by the inhabitants of this maritime centre which stands on a promontory overlooking the splendid gulf of Castellammare and that only in 1954, after 134 years, they were able to celebrate the longed-for autonomy which allowed the determination of their own cultural identity also as a bureaucratic institution.
Today trappeto, as well as keeping alive the culture of an essentially maritime village as per historical tradition, Is also a holiday centre which is constantly developing precisely to highlight the peculiarities of a history that has its roots in the Middle Ages.
Certainly this delicious fishing village it deserves to be explored by tourists and travelers looking for places that are still true today because they have not changed their nature over time.
