Abakainon was a city of the Sikels, the people who were in Sicily before the Greeks, and one of the few that was never turned into a colony. It survived among stronger neighbours, took their alphabet and their customs, and for a time struck its own coins: that is the sign a city was independent, and its whole history can be read there.
What to see
The site is on a plateau between the Nebrodi and the Peloritani, in the territory of Tripi, and what you visit above all is the necropolis and the remains of the ancient structures. The tombs are rock-cut and chambered, and the grave goods that came out of them tell of a society that traded with the Greek world without being part of it.
In 396 before Christ the tyrant of Syracuse took a slice of Abakainon's territory to found nearby Tyndaris, and from there the end began: first the loss of the right to mint, then alliances changed as convenience dictated, finally subjection. The material is kept in the village's antiquarium.
Visiting
The site and the antiquarium are at Tripi, in the province of Messina, an hour by car from the Tyrrhenian coast; access to the excavations is free, the antiquarium keeps its own hours and it is worth asking in the village. An hour and a half.
Our editors' tip
Look at the coins in the antiquarium before climbing to the excavations: they are small, in bronze and silver, and they bear the city's name. Striking coins meant existing as a political subject, and when a city was forbidden to do so, it was erased without any need to destroy it. Here history went exactly that way.