Motya is a flat island about a kilometre across in the Stagnone Lagoon, reached by a small flat-bottomed ferry from Contrada Spagnola. It was a Phoenician trading post from the 8th century BC and grew rich on the salt trade and the export of purple dye. Carthage made it a major outpost; Dionysius of Syracuse destroyed it.
The island today is owned by the Whitaker Foundation, set up by the English wine family that ran one of the big Marsala houses. A loop walk of an hour or two passes the ruins of the city walls, the dry-dock cothon, the tophet (a Phoenician sanctuary where children were ritually buried), and the small house museum, which holds the Motya Charioteer — a Greek marble masterpiece briefly lent to the British Museum but normally on display here.
Just offshore, a submerged Phoenician causeway still runs from the island to the mainland; you can wade along it at low tide.