Situated on a high plateau about 30 meters above sea level, Selinunte takes its name from Selinon, wild parsley. Was founded by colonists from Megara Hyblaea guided by ecista Pammilos, in the seventh century BC successive megaresi settlers Immigration Sicelioti occurred both in the last decades of the seventh is for the entire sixth century until the beginning of the V. Selinunte tried to found colonies in Western Sicily. When, in the early fifth century, the war broke out between the Sicilian Greeks and Carthaginians, which ended with the battle of Himera in 480, Selinunte, oddly, preferred to ally with Carthage. He had numerous and strong contrasts with Segesta until 409, the year of its destruction precisely by the Carthaginians. Selinunte so he found himself subjected to the dominion of the Punic fortified and reconstructed, in the area where once was the acropolis: the archaeological remains have a mixed village, Punic and greek. The Carthaginian domination lasted until the First Punic War. Carthage, to defend against Roman attacks, he decided to concentrate his forces in Lylibeo, moving the population of Selinunte, destroying the city and abandoning it to ruin. A powerful earthquake in the century X or XI, ended perhaps reduced to a heap of ruins the monuments of the ancient city. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the city was rediscovered by historian Tommaso Fazello. In 1823 the British undertook the archaeological excavations.