The archaeological site of Monte Bonifato, above Alcamo, preserves the remains of a settlement used over many centuries. According to Lycophron, a Hellenistic scholar of the third century BC, the mountain was home to a town called Longuro, founded by Greeks who had fled Troy. As early as the second half of the sixteenth century Tommaso Fazello identified its remains, later studied by the Alcamo historians Ignazio De Blasi and Vincenzo Di Giovanni; Roman lamps and brick stamps found in the nineteenth century by Pietro Maria Rocca are in the Salinas museum in Palermo.
What to see
The 2014 excavations, directed by the archaeologist Antonina Stellino, uncovered an outlying quarter inhabited from the eighth century BC to the thirteenth century AD: eight buildings with their doorways, four uphill and four downhill of the street leading to the settlement, and a dry-stone retaining wall about 20 metres long, in squared blocks of local limestone, with traces of rooms perhaps for sentries. From the sixth century BC the Bonifato was probably a satellite of nearby Segesta; the Arabs, arriving in the ninth century, built their houses on top of the older ones.
The two medieval cisterns, A and B, date from the thirteenth century: A, about 4 metres high and 6 long, served several houses and has a hatch on the north side for drawing water; inside B the date 1264 is carved. The finds, mostly proto-Elymian, native, Attic, Ionian and Hellenistic pottery from the seventh century BC, confirm contacts with Segesta and the other Elymian centres.
Visiting
The site has been open to the public since 15 December 2015; volunteers of the Archeoclub Calatub look after its cleaning and protection and organise visiting days. Openings and guided tours should be checked beforehand.
Our editors' tip
The oldest finds, including pottery and bronze fragments from a house of the seventh or sixth century BC, can be seen at the Museo Baglio Anselmi in Marsala, pending the Antiquarium planned for Alcamo.
