Greek and Phoenician settlements in Sicily

735 BC: The first populations which settled in Sicily are called the Sicani and the Sicules, they immigrated over the southern point of Italy to Sicily. With the immigration of the Greeks and the people from Carthage their time in Sicily ended. The Greeks founded their first settlement in Sicily in the year 735 BC. The name of the town was Naxos. More important settlements followed, centres were Syracuse, Acragas, Gela, and Selinunte. In the valley of temples in Agrigento you still can take a look at good preserved temples, build by the Greeks. Sicily became an important part of the classical Greek civilisation and famous people, like Archimedes, came from Sicily.

536 BC the people from Carthage entered the island for the first time, they established settlements on the west side of Sicily. Carthage is a city created by the Phoenicians 814 BC, located at the Mediterranean Sea on the African mainland. The Phoenicians founded the cities Panormus (which is now Palermo), Solois and Motya. With the settlement of the people of Carthage on the island a long conflict between the Greeks and the Phoenicians began. In the First and the Second Sicilian Wars the people of Carthage managed to gain control over most of the parts of the iland, only the eastern part remained under the control of the Greeks, dominated from the people of Syracuse.