Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(French) and Aragonese (Spanish) in a turmoil of rebellion and revolution that continued
until the Spanish Bourbons united Sicily with Naples in 1734 as the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies. Little more than a century later, on 11 May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi planned his
daring and dramatic unification of Italy from Marsala.
Reeling from this catalogue of colonisers, Sicilians struggled in poverty-stricken condi-
tions. Unified with Italy, but no better off, nearly one million men and women emigrated
to the USA between 1871 and 1914 before the outbreak of WWI.
Ironically, the Allies (seeking Mafia help in America for the reinvasion of Italy) helped
in establishing the Mafia's stranglehold on Sicily. In the absence of suitable administrat-
ors, they invited the undesirable
mafioso
(Mafia boss) Don Calógero Vizzini to do the job.
When Sicily became a semi-autonomous region in 1948, Mafia control extended right to
the heart of politics, and the region plunged into a 50-year silent civil war. It only started
to emerge from this after the anti-Mafia maxi-trials of the 1980s, in which Sicily's revered
magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino hauled hundreds of Mafia members
into court, leading to important prosecutions against members of the massive heroin and
cocaine network between Palermo and New York, known as the 'pizza connection'.
The assassinations of Falcone and Borsellino in 1992 helped galvanise Sicilian public
opposition to the Mafia's inordinate influence, and while organised crime lives on, the
thuggery and violence of the 1980s has diminished. A growing number of businesses re-
fuse to pay the extortionate protection money known as the
pizzo
, and there continue to
be important arrests, further encouraging those who would speak out against the Mafia.
On the political front, two anti-Mafia crusaders were elected to high-profile posts in 2012,
Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando and Sicilian governor Rosario Crocetta.
Getting There & Away
AIR
An increasing number of airlines fly direct to Sicily's three international airports -
Palermo (PMO), Catania (CTA) and Trapani (TPS) - although many still require a trans-
899 55 25 89;
www.ryanair.com
)
is the leading low-cost airline carrier serving Sicily.
BOAT
Regular car and passenger ferries cross the strait between Villa San Giovanni (Calabria)
and Messina, while hydrofoils connect Messina with Reggio di Calabria.
