Sicily
From Open Encyclopedia
| Image:Flag of Sicily.svg | |
| Capital | Palermo |
| President | Salvatore Cuffaro (House of Freedoms) |
| Provinces | Agrigento Caltanissetta Catania Enna Messina Palermo Ragusa Syracuse Trapani |
| Municipalities | 390 |
| Area | 25,703 km² |
| - Ranked | 1st (8.5 %) |
| Population (2003 est.) - Total - Ranked | 4,972,124 4th (8.7 %) 193/km² |
| Image:Italy Regions Sicily Map.png | |
| Map highlighting the location of Sicilia in Italy | |
- Sicilian disambiguates here; see also Sicilian language or Sicilian Defence.
Sicily (Sicilia in Italian) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 25,700 sq. km and 5 million inhabitants.
Contents |
Geography
This region faces Calabria over the Strait of Messina, and that's the only conterminous region. The volcano Etna, is situated close to Catania. Etna is 3,320 m (10,900 ft) high, making it the tallest volcano in Europe. It is also one of the world's most active volcanos.
The Aeolian islands to the north are administratively a part of Sicily, as are the Aegadian Islands and Pantelleria Island to the west, Ustica Island to the north-west, and the Pelagian Islands to the south-west.
Sicily has been noted for two millennia as a grain-producing territory: olives and wine are among its other agricultural products. The mines of the Caltanissetta district became a leading sulphur-producing area in the 19th century, but have declined since the 1950s.
Transport
Vehicles
Most of Sicily's motorways (autostrade) run through the north of the region - the most important ones being A19 Palermo - Catania, A20 Palermo - Messina, A29 Palermo - Mazara del Vallo and the paid-for A18 Messina - Catania. Much of the motorway network is raised on columns due to the mountainous terrain.
The road network in the south of the country consists of well maintained, yet not motorway-class roads.
Train
Sicily is connected to the Italian peninsula by the national railway company, Trenitalia, though trains are loaded onto ferries for the crossing from the mainland. Officially, the Stretto di Messina, S.p.A. schedules to the second half of 2006 the beginning of construction on the world's longest suspension bridge, The Strait of Messina Bridge Project. If and when completed, it will mark the first time in history that Sicily has been connected by a land link to Italy.
Air
Sicily is served by national and international flights (mainly European) from to Palermo International Airport and Catania-Fontanarossa Airport. There are also minor national airports in Trapani and small islands of Pantelleria and Lampedusa.
Towns and Cities
Image:Palermo panorama.JPG Sicily's principal cities include the regional capital Palermo, together with the other provincial capitals Catania, Messina, Syracuse (Siracusa in Italian), Trapani, Enna, Caltanissetta, Agrigento, Ragusa. Other famous Sicilian towns include Cefalù,Caltagirone, Taormina, Bronte, Marsala, Corleone, Castellammare del Golfo, Gela, Francavilla di Sicilia, and Abacaenum (now Tripi), Corleone.
Flag
For more information, see Flag of Sicily.
The regional flag of Sicily, recognized since January 2000, is also the historical one of the island, since 1282. It is divided diagonally yellow over red, with the trinacria symbol in the center. The trinacria symbol is used also by the Isle of Man.
Arts
Image:Jacob Philipp Hackert 006.jpg Sicily is well known as a country of art: many poets and writers were born on this region, starting from the Sicilian School in the early 13th century, which inspired much subsequent Italian poetry and created the first Italian standard. The most famous, however, are Luigi Pirandello, Giovanni Verga, Salvatore Quasimodo, Gesualdo Bufalino and the dialectal poet Ignazio Buttitta. Other Sicilian artists include the composers Sigismondo d'India (from Palermo), Vincenzo Bellini (from Catania), as well as the sculptor Tommaso Geraci.
Noto and Ragusa contain some of Italy's best examples of Baroque architecture, carved in the local red sandstone. Caltagirone is renowned for its decorative ceramics. Palermo is also a major center of Italian opera. Its Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy and the third largest in the world, seating 1400.
Sicily is also home to two prominent folk art traditions, both of which draw heavily on the island's Norman influence. Donkey carts are painted with intricate decorations of scenes from the Norman romantic poems, such as The Song of Roland. The same tales are told in traditional puppet theatres which feature hand-made wooden marionettes.
The 1988 movie Nuovo Cinema Paradiso was about life in a Sicilian town following the Second World War.
History
The autochthonous peoples of Sicily, long absorbed into the population, were tribes known to Greek writers as the Elymians, the Sicani and the Siculi or Sicels. Of these, the last were clearly the latest to arrive on this land and were related to other Indo-European tribes of southern Italy, such as the Italoi of Calabria, the Oenotrians, Chones, and Leuterni (or Leutarni), the Opicans, and the Ausones. It's possible, however, that the Sicani were originally an Iberian tribe. The Elymi, too, may have distant origins outside of Italy, in the Aegean Sea area.
Sicily was colonized by Phoenicians and Punic settlers from Carthage and by Greeks, starting in the 8th century BC. The most important colony was established at Syracuse in 734 BC. Other important Greek colonies were Gela, Acragas, Selinunte, Himera, and Zancle or Messene (modern-day Messina, not to be confused with the ancient city of Messene in Messenia, Greece). These city states were an important part of classical Greek civilization, which included Sicily as part of Magna Graecia - both Empedocles and Archimedes were from Sicily. Sicilian politics was intertwined with politics in Greece itself, leading Athens, for example, to mount the disastrous Sicilian Expedition during the Peloponnesian War.
The Greeks came into conflict with the Punic trading communities with ties to Carthage, which was on the African mainland not far from the southwest corner of the region, and had its own colonies on Sicily. Palermo was a Carthaginian city, founded in the 8th century BC, named Zis or Sis ("Panormos" to the Greeks). Hundreds of Phoenician and Carthaginian grave sites have been found in necropoli over a large area of Palermo, now built over, south of the Norman palace, where the Norman kings had a vast park. In the far west, Lilybaeum (now Marsala) never was thoroughly Hellenized. In the First and Second Sicilian Wars, Carthage was in control of all but the eastern part of Sicily, which was dominated by Syracuse.
In the 3rd century BC the Messanan Crisis motivated the intervention of the Roman Republic into Sicilian affairs, and led to the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage. By the end of war (242 BC) all Sicily was in Roman hands, becoming Rome's first province outside of the Italian peninsula.
The initial success of the Carthaginians during the Second Punic War encouraged many of the Sicilian cities to revolt against Roman rule. Rome sent troops to put down the rebellions (it was during the siege of Syracuse that Archimedes was killed). Carthage briefly took control of parts of Sicily, but in the end was driven off. Many Carthaginian sympathizers were killed-- in 210 BC the Roman consul M. Valerian told the Roman Senate that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".
For the next 6 centuries Sicily was a province of the Roman Empire. It was something of a rural backwater, important chiefly for its grainfields which were a mainstay of the food supply of the city of Rome. The empire did not make much effort to Romanize the region, which remained largely Greek. The most notable event of this period was the notorious misgovernment of Verres.
In AD 440 Sicily fell to the Vandal king Geiseric. A few decades later it came into Ostrogothic hands, where it remained until it was conquered by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 535. But a new Ostrogoth king, Totila, drove down the Italian peninsula and then plundered and conquered Sicily in 550. He in turn was defeated and killed by the Byzantine general Narses in 552. For a brief period (662 - 668) during Byzantine rule Syracuse was the imperial capital, until Constans II was assassinated. Sicily was then ruled by the Byzantine Empire until the Muslim Arab conquest of AD 827-902.
The cultural diversity and religious tolerance of the period of Muslim rule under the Kalbid dynasty, that made Palermo the capital city of the Emirate of Sicily, continued under the Normans who conquered Sicily in 1060-1090 (raising its status to that of a kingdom in 1130), and the south German Hohenstaufen dynasty which ruled from 1194, adopting as well Palermo as its principal seat from 1220. But local Christian-Muslim conflicts fueled by the Crusades were escalating during this later period, and in 1224, Frederick II, grandson of Roger II, expelled the last remaining Arabs from Sicily.
Conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy led in 1266 to Sicily's conquest by Charles I, duke of Anjou: opposition to French officialdom and taxation led in 1282 to insurrection (the Sicilian Vespers) and successful invasion by king Peter III of Aragón.
Ruled from 1479 by the kings of Spain, Sicily suffered a ferocious outbreak of plague (1656), followed by a damaging earthquake in the east of the region (1693). Periods of rule by the crown of Savoy (1713-1720) and then the Austrian Habsburgs gave way to union (1734) with the Bourbon-ruled kingdom of Naples as the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
After being the scene of abortive revolutionary movements in 1820 and 1848 against Bourbon denial of constitutional government, Sicily was joined with the kingdom of Italy in 1860 following the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi.
In late 1852, Prince Emanuele Realmuto had set up power in North Central Sicily. Highly educated, the prince established a political system set to bring Sicily's economy to the highest levels in all of Italy. The Prince's life however was shortened by an assasination in 1857. To this day some of his work is still present in the Italian parliament.
In 1866, Palermo revolted against Italy. The city was soon bombed by the Italian navy, which disembarked on September 22 under the command of Raffaele Cadorna. Italian soldiers summarily executed the civilian insurgents, and took possession once again of the island.
A long extensive guerrilla campaign against the unionists (1861-1871) took place throughout southern Italy, and in Sicily, inducing the Italian governments to a ferocious military repression. Ruled under martial law for many years Sicily (and southern Italy) was ravaged by the Italian army that summarily executed hundreds of thousands of people, made tens of thousands prisoners, destroyed villages, and deported people. The Sicilian economy collapsed, leading to an unprecedented wave of emigration. In 1894 labour agitation through the radical Fasci dei lavoratori led once again to the imposition of martial law.
Image:Map operation husky landing.jpg The organised crime networks commonly known as the mafia extended their influence in the late 19th century (and many of its operatives also emigrated to other countries, particularly the United States); partly suppressed under the Fascist regime beginning in the 1920s, they recovered following the World War II Allied invasion of Sicily.
An autonomous region from 1946, Sicily benefited to some extent from the partial Italian land reform of 1950-1962 and special funding from the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the Italian government's indemnification Fund for the South (1950-1984). Sicily returned to the headlines in 1992, however, when the assassination of two anti-mafia magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino triggered a general upheaval in Italian political life.
Sicilian people
The position of Sicily as a stepping stone of sorts in the center of the Mediterranean Basin has lent it strategic importance throughout history, resulting in an endless procession of settlers and conquerors. Of these, the earliest seem to have had the greatest demographic impact. Genetic research suggests that colonists from southern Europe (especially mainland Italy and Greece) have been most important in the peopling of Sicily:
- The tree allows a division of the populations into two main groups. We find Northern African populations in the same branch. The second branch groups all the Italian and European populations, but it is split into some small branches. Trapani, Campania and Apulia group together, while Palermo lies close to Calabria. Another branch takes in France, Spain, and the Balearic islands and Greece splits between this branch and the Italian populations. The Sardinians and Corsicans appear as two outliers.
- . . .
- A further interesting aspect which our work has shown is the affinity of the Sicilian and southern Italian populations to Greece. This similarity already explained by Piazza is owed to the introduction of Greek genes into southern Italy during the Greek colonisation. [{{fullurl:}}#endnote_Vona_1998]
No data exists on the contribution of Vikings, Normans and other Germanic peoples to the Sicilian gene pool, but given the above, it must have been small. On the other hand, the claim that eastern Sicilians are Greek while western Sicilians are Phoenician/Arab has been rejected. Evidence shows that Greek heritage predominates everywhere, with a minority of recent non-European admixture:
- Our hypothesis stated that any diversity found between the two subpopulations would represent the signature of early colonization of the island by Greek and Phoenician peoples. Correspondence analysis showed that there was no clear geographic clustering within Sicily. The genetic distance matrix used for identifying the main genetic barriers revealed no east-west differences within the island's population, at least at the provincial level. FST estimates proved that the population subdivision did not affect the pattern of gene frequency variation; this implies that Sicily is effectively one panmictic unit. The bulk of our results confirm the absence of genetic differentiation between eastern and western Sicilians, and thus we reject the hypothesis of the subdivision of an ancient population in two areas.
- . . .
- Clearly detected in the extant Sicilian gene pool was a clue for more recent gene flow of people from northern Africa and the Middle East superimposed on a predominantly Greek contribution. [{{fullurl:}}#endnote_Rickards_1998]
The non-European gene flow, too, must have been small because Vona failed to detect it in his Sicilian sample, stating that "Our analysis seems, therefore, not to confirm the existence of an evident genic flow [from] the Northern African populations." [1], a finding which is echoed in another study with similar sample populations. It concludes that "The first axis clearly differentiates the North African and Middle Eastern populations from the European populations." [{{fullurl:}}#endnote_Kandil_1999]
Thus, it would appear that Sicilians are primarily the descendents of Siculi, Sicani and Elymi tribes, as well as ancient Greeks, rather than of later conquerors from across the sea. A fourth study on the same topic offers a possible explanation for the present demography of Sicily and the rest of southern Europe:
- Therefore it seems that the Mediterranean Sea may have acted initially as a geographic barrier, making it simpler for Neolithic or upper Paleolithic populations to expand along the respective coasts. The cultural differences accumulated in the process may then have made it even more problematic to mix with individuals coming from the opposite coast. If this was the case, the current pattern of genetic diversity may be a joint product of initial geographic isolation and successive cultural divergence, leading to the origin of cultural barriers to population admixture. Both phenomena may have contributed to impairing trans-Mediterranean gene flow. [{{fullurl:}}#endnote_Simoni_1999]
Today Sicily, like all of western Europe, is home to many communities of immigrants, including Tunisians, Moroccans, Nigerians, Indians, Romanians, Russians, Chinese and Gypsies from the Balkans.
Sicily's population is approximately 5 million, and there are an additional 10 million people of Sicilian descent around the world, mostly in the United States, Argentina, Canada, Australia and other EU countries.
Sicilian language
Main article: Sicilian language
Many Sicilians are bilingual in both Italian and Sicilian, a separate Romance language, descended from Vulgar Latin, with Greek, Arabic, French, Provençal, German, Catalan and Spanish influences. It is important to note that Sicilian is not a derivative of Italian. Although thought by some to be a dialect, Sicilianu is a distinct language, with a rich history and a sizeable vocabulary (at least 250,000 words), due to the influence of the different conquerors of, and settlers to, this land. Sicilian dialects are also spoken in the southern and central sections of the Italian regions Calabria (Calabrese) and Puglia (Salentino); and had a significant influence on the Maltese Language, which was a part of the Kingdom of Sicily (in its various forms) until the late 18th century. With the predominance of Italian in Italian schools, the media, etc., Sicilian is no longer the first language of many Sicilians. Indeed, in urban centers in particular, one is more likely to hear standard Italian spoken rather than Sicilian, especially among the young.
Sicilian generally uses the word ending [u] for singular masculine nouns and adjectives, and [a] for feminine. The plural is usually [i] for both masculine and feminine. By contrast, in Italian masculine nouns and adjectives that end in [o] in the singular pass to [i] in the plural, while the feminine counterparts pass from [a] to [e].
The "-LL-" sound (in words of Latin origin, for example) manifests itself in Sicilian as a voiced retroflex plosive with the tip of the tongue curled up and back, a sound which is not part of Standard Italian. In Sicilian, this sound is written simply as "-dd-" although the sound itself is not [d] but rather [ɖ]. For example, the Italian word bello is beddu in Sicilian.
In numerous villages, the Arbëreshë dialect of the Albanian language has been spoken since a wave of refugees settled there in the 15th century. While it is spoken within the household, Italian is the official language and modern Greek is chanted in the local Byzantine liturgy. There are also several areas where dialects of the Lombard language of the Gallo-Italic family are spoken. Much of this population is also tri-lingual, being able to also speak one of the Sicilian dialects as well.
List of Sicilians
- Empedocles (c. 490 BC – 430 BC), scientist and philosopher
- Gorgias (c. 483 BC – 375 BC), philosopher
- Timaeus (c. 345 BC – 250 BC), historian
- Archimedes (c. 287 BC – 212 BC), scientist
- Diodorus Siculus (c. 90 BC – 30 BC), historian
- Pope Leo II, Pope from 682 to 683
- Roger II of Sicily, King of Sicily 1130 – 1154
- William I of Sicily, King of Sicily 1154 – 1166
- William II of Sicily, King of Sicily 1166 – 1189
- Frederick II (1194 – 1250), Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily (Frederick I of Sicily)
- Cielo d'Alcamo (c. 1200 – 1250), poet
- Giacomo da Lentini (1210 – 1260), poet
- Guido Delle Colonne (1215 – 1290), poet
- Antonello da Messina (1430 – 1479), painter
- Antonello Gagini (1478 – 1536), sculptor
- Francesco Maurolico (1494 – 1575), mathematician
- Sigismondo D'India (1582 – 1629), composer
- Pietro Novelli (1603 – 1647), painter
- Giacomo Serpotta (1656 – 1732), sculptor
- Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 – 1725), composer
- Filippo Juvarra (1678 – 1736), architect
- Giovanni Meli (1740 – 1815), poet
- Vincenzo Bellini (1801 – 1835), opera composer
- Francesco Crispi (1819 – 1901), politician
- Emanuele Realmuto (1830 – 1857), Prince
- Giovanni Verga (1840 – 1922), novelist
- Giuseppe Sergi (1841 – 1936), anthropologist
- Vito Cascio Ferro (1862 – 1943), mafioso
- Luigi Pirandello (1867 – 1936), dramatist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
- Nino Martoglio (1870 – 1921), poet
- Luigi Sturzo (1871 – 1959), politician
- Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896 – 1957), writer, poet
- Julius Evola (1898 – 1974), political philosopher
- Ignazio Buttitta (1899 – 1997), poet
- Salvatore Quasimodo (1901 – 1968), poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
- Andrea Camilleri (born 1925), novelist
- Bernardo Provenzano (born 1933), mafioso
- Nino Vaccarella (born 1933), race driver
- Giovanni Falcone (1939 – 1992), judge
- Paolo Borsellino (1940 – 1992), judge
- Giuseppe Tornatore (born 1956), filmmaker
- Anna Kanakis (born 1962), model, actress
- Salvatore Schillaci (born 1964), football player
- Maria Grazia Cucinotta (born 1969), actress
List of Sicilian-Americans
- Salvatore Maranzano (1869 – 1931), mafioso
- Charles Atlas (1892 – 1972), bodybuilder
- Frank Capra (1897 – 1991), film director
- Lucky Luciano (1897 – 1962), mafioso
- Anthony T. Rossi (1900 – 1993), businessman
- Vincent R. Impellitteri (1900 – 1987), politician
- Joseph Bonanno (1905 – 2002), mafioso
- Tony Canzoneri (1908 – 1959), boxer
- Louis Prima (1910 – 1978), jazz musician
- Joseph Barbera (born 1911), cartoonist
- Joe DiMaggio (1914 – 1999), baseball player
- Mario Puzo (1920 – 1999), author
- Jack Valenti (born 1921), lobbyist
- Mario Lanza (1921 – 1959), opera singer
- Tony Bennett (born 1926), singer, painter
- Ben Gazzara (born 1930), actor
- Robert Loggia (born 1930), actor
- Philip Zimbardo (born 1933), psychologist
- Sonny Bono (1935 – 1998), entertainer, politician
- Antonin Scalia (born 1936), U.S. Supreme Court Justice
- Sal Mineo (1939 – 1976), actor
- Al Pacino (born 1940), actor
Image:MartinScorsese(cannes).jpg
- Martin Scorcese (born 1942), film director
- Rudy Giuliani (born 1944), politician
- Sammy "The Bull" Gravano (born 1945), mafioso
- Frank LoBiondo (born 1946), Congressman
- Vincent Schiavelli (1948 - 2005), actor
- Tony Danza (born 1951), actor
- Robert Torricelli (born 1951), Congressman
- Jack Scalia (born 1951), actor
- Chazz Palminteri (born 1952), actor
- John Turturro (born 1957), actor
- Ray Romano (born 1957), comedian
- Danny Bonaduce (born 1959), actor
- Mike Piazza (born 1963), baseball player
- Marisa Tomei (born 1964), actress
List of part-Sicilians
- Frank Sinatra (1915 – 1998), singer, actor
- Silvana Mangano (1930 – 1989), actress
- Claudia Cardinale (born 1938), actress
- Frank Zappa (1940 – 1993), musician
- Robert DeNiro (born 1943), actor
- Michael Barone (born 1944), pundit
- Donald Manzullo (born 1944), Congressman
- Nicholas Lampson (born 1945), Congressman
- Sylvester Stallone (born 1946), actor, filmmaker
- Armand Assante (born 1949), actor
- Frank Pallone (born 1951), Congressman
- Daniel Frisa (born 1951), Congressman
- Cyndi Lauper (born 1953), pop singer
- Mary Landrieu (born 1955), Congresswoman
- David Caruso (born 1956), actor
- Natalie Merchant (born 1963), musician
- Rachael Ray (born 1968), celebrity cook
- Gene Siudut (born 1973), actor
- Giovanni Ribisi (born 1974), actor
- Natalie Imbruglia (born 1975), pop singer
See also
- Sicilian language
- Sicilian School
- Cuisine of Sicily
- Category:People of Sicilian heritage
- Monarchs of Naples and Sicily
- Two Sicilies
- Normans
- Triskelion
- Sicilian music
Footnotes
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|else=a}} Vona et al. (1998) "Genetic structure of western Sicily." International Journal of Anthropology, vol. 13, pp. 137-147
2. ^ Rickards et al. (1998) "Genetic history of the population of Sicily." Human Biology, vol. 70, pp. 699-714
3. ^ Kandil et al. (1999) "Red cell enzyme polymorphisms in Moroccans and Southern Spaniards: New data for the genetic history of the Western Mediterranean." Human Biology, vol. 71, pp. 791-802
4. ^ Simoni et al. (1999) "Patterns of gene flow inferred from genetic distances in the Mediterranean region." Human Biology, vol. 71, pp. 399-415
| Regions of Italy | Image:Flag of Italy.svg |
|---|---|
| Abruzzo | Basilicata | Calabria | Campania | Emilia-Romagna | Latium | Liguria | Lombardy | Marche | Molise | Piedmont | Apulia | Tuscany | Umbria | Veneto | |
| Friuli-Venezia Giulia | Sardinia | Sicily | Trentino-South Tyrol | Aosta Valley | |
