Polo Museale "Antonino Cordici"

Erice's civic museum gathers the town's documented memory inside a former Franciscan convent just off Piazza Umberto I: archaeology from ancient Eryx, Gagini's marble Annunciazione, sacred furnishings and contemporary art.

Why it matters

The museum occupies a former Franciscan convent near Piazza Umberto I and preserves archaeological finds, sacred art and works from the town's former churches and convents. The museum complex the municipality registers as the Polo Museale "Antonino Cordici" is Erice's civic museum, founded in 1876 and still owned and run by the comune today. Its cases hold the material record of ancient Eryx — stone tools, Punic jewelry, the marble head of the goddess whose sanctuary made this mountain a Mediterranean destination — alongside paintings and furnishings gathered from suppressed churches and convents. A regional network of municipal museums run under ANCI Sicilia lists the complex as Erice's registered museum, and Sicily's official tourism portal names it in the same breath as the Castello di Venere. For a town that trades heavily on atmosphere, this is where atmosphere is replaced by evidence.

What to notice

Begin with the figurative arts room and the Annunciazione that Antonello Gagini carved in 1525 on commission from the nobleman Giacomo Pilati, a marble group the provincial tourism portal describes as the museum's most important work. In the archaeological section, look for the small marble head known as the testina di Venere — a fragment of the deity whose cult at the sanctuary of Venus Ericina shaped Erice's ancient fame — and for the pintadera, a terracotta stamp with geometric motifs, both from the founding Cordici and Hernandez collections. The sacred-art displays include a wooden crucifix and an altar throne attributed to Pietro Orlando of Trapani, plus the marble well cover that once served the Duomo, carved in the manner of the Gagini workshop. The contemporary section holds the La Salerniana collection, which brings the story into the late twentieth century, and a hall reserved for temporary exhibitions keeps the programme from settling into permanence.

Context and history

The museum was instituted on 2 January 1876, when the municipality assembled archaeological pieces from the Hernandez collections, coins once owned by the scholar Cordici, objects from the Coppola family and works from churches and monasteries suppressed under the Siccardi laws. It takes its name from Antonio Cordici (1586–1666), the Erice historian whom the municipality credits as the territory's first collector; records alternate between the forms "Antonio" and "Antonino Cordici", but they all denote the same institution. The collection has never stayed put for long. It started on the ground floor of the town hall, moved in 1939 to the upper floors of the former municipal theatre, then occupied rooms near the civic library. Since 2011, and completely from 2015, it has been housed in the former convent of the Franciscan Third Order, a larger and quieter setting that finally lets the archaeological, sacred-art, arms, figurative-arts and contemporary sections be presented together.