History of Porta Serisso in Trapani
Serisso gate takes its name from Serisso who placed the severed head of his wife on the gate, guilty of having betrayed him.
The rich trapanese merchant Felice Serisso lived near the Ossuna gate and got rich thanks to the sale of slaves. One day he brought home a Turkish slave who fell in love with his wife and was paid. The two thus decided to flee to Tunisia. The slave organized a revolt with other local slaves and among the prisoners they captured in the revolt was also his master Felice Serisso. The Turk and the merchant's wife took Serisso into their service, pretending not to know him, and gave him the name of Ali. The man, seeing himself as a prisoner of the same man to whom he had been his slave and of his own wife, meditated a terrible revenge: he attacked the slave with a dagger, killing him and with the slave's saber he cut off his wife's head. He put his head in a sack and returned to Trapani. He hung his head in the city gate as a warning to wives who betray their husbands and led a secluded and Christian life. After his death he wanted his house to be converted into a Church under the title of Jesus and Mary.
Another version of the story has it that he returned to Trapani with a Turkish woman who became his wife, with whom he lived happily.
