The Forte of Santa Caterina - Favignana - Egadi islands

The Forte of Santa Caterina, which you can immediately admire upon your arrival at the port of Favignana, is a castle that stands on the highest peak of the homonymous mountain on the island.

The Forte of Santa Caterina, built with large ocher tuff bricks, collects in itself a story particularly intersected with the Norman peoples in Sicily and with the events of the island itself.

Count Roger II, who was then crowned in 1130 King of Sicily by Antipapa Anacleto II °, was preparing to gather his fleet of 300 ships and his militias near Marsala, on the western coast of Sicily to Africa in search of new conquests.

Three years before this historic event, Roger II ° with a Royal Edict had established that the island of Favignana was fortified with the construction, around the Arab watchtowers, of three castles that centuries later will take the names of Santa Caterina, San Giacomo and San Leonardo.

If, therefore, the first fortifications date back to the Norman period, it is due, later, to Andrea Riccio, lord of the island, the construction of the castle (and probably its current conformation) in 1498.

Until now the fortress of Santa Caterina was not yet used as a place of punishment.

All this began a few centuries later, when Favignana is considered the island of the pit of Santa Caterina.