Here you find something that survives nowhere else in the world: a Punic warship. The Lilibeo Baglio Anselmi regional archaeological museum, facing Capo Boeo in Marsala, arranged its collections inside an old wine baglio built around 1880, turned into a museum in 1986 and opened in 1999.
What to see
The Punic ship, recovered in 1969 off Isola Grande at the northern mouth of the Stagnone, is what scholars come from all over the world to see: it is the only Carthaginian warship to have reached us. Since 2015 it has been joined by the Roman ship of Marausa, fished up off the Trapani coast. Through the rooms you also meet the Venus Lilybetana, a Roman statue copied from a Hellenistic original, Greek and Roman ceramics, epigraphs, transport amphorae and anchor stocks. Behind the building stretches the archaeological area of Lilybaeum, with its Roman insulae and the mosaics now shown in the museum.
Visiting
After the 2016 refit the visit is enriched by large screens and video reconstructions that help read the finds. The museum and the Lilybaeum park behind it are seen together: it is the best way to understand the ancient city and its harbour.
Our editors' tip
Stop in front of the Punic ship and look closely at its planks: they carry incised Phoenician-Punic letters that helped the shipwrights assemble the hull quickly. It is the detail that turns a wreck into a lesson in ancient engineering.