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Sicily

Sicily
Sicilia-Bandiera.png
Italy Regions Sicily Map.png
Administration
Country Flag: Italy Italy
Region Insular Italy
Capital Palermo
Statistics
Area 25 700 km
Population 5.1 million inhabitants. ( 2001 )
Density 198 inhab. / km
Provinces 9
Commons 390
Other administrative data
President Raffaele Lombardo ( MpA )
( 2008 - 2,013 )
ISO 3166-2 code IT-82

Sicily in Italian ) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island of the Mediterranean. Its capital is the city of Palermo. The flag, the Gorgon three legs ( Trinacria ), represents the three points of the island, western tip of Trapani - Marsala , north-east of Messina and south-east of Syracuse.

Summary

/ / Geography

Physical Geography

Satellite image of Sicily during an eruption of Etna in 2002

Sicily is an island south of Italy , a little over 3 km of the peninsula which is separated by the Strait of Messina and 140 km from Tunisia which is separated by the Sicily Channel.

The island enjoys a Mediterranean climate , with mild, wet winters and hot summers and very dry. In spring the countryside is green and flowers, in summer they are yellow and without flowers. The aridity is marked in the south, directly affected by the sirocco. Sicily also suffers from a chronic water deficit, causing shortages and regular cuts.

The topography of the island is often mountainous, particularly in the north with the mountains of Nebrodi and Madonie , extensions of the Apennines. Central and south are composed of hills. There are few plains, including the plain of Catania and the Conca d'Oro.

Located at the intersection of the Eurasian Plate and the African plate , the island is famous for the volcano Etna , but there are other volcanoes in the Aeolian Islands north-east, Stromboli and Vulcano. Sicily is also prone to earthquakes, as at Messina in 1908 or in the Belice Valley in 1968. The hydrographic network is composed of small rivers and perennial streams.

Human geography

Populated by more than 5 million inhabitants, Sicily remains despite successive waves of emigration to Europe and North America towards a densely populated. Its density is 197 inhabitants per square kilometer, against 68.7 per Sardinia to Corsica and 32. The population is concentrated in large cities (Palermo, Catania, Messina, Syracuse), and in many villages and small towns in cohousing.

Nicknamed Trinacria in ancient Greece because of its triangular shape, its location lock in the center of the Mediterranean has always given him a strategic position. This explains the cultural richness of the island. The continuous mixed populations explains the varied physical Sicilians, some people have traits Arabists, others have a very clear complexion, inherited from the Normans.

The official language is the Italian , but the Sicilian is commonly used in conversations with family or friends. Even within the Sicilian dialect, there are other dialects, depending on the different locations of Sicily. At the heart of the province of Palermo, on "Plain of the Albanians" is still talked about the Albanian.

Sicilian Provinces

Climate

The variety of landscapes in Sicily can not assign a homogenous environment throughout the island. In general, the Sicilian climate is mild in winter and hot in summer. This allows a typical Mediterranean vegetation to grow. It is a Mediterranean climate with African tones. The Sirocco , the Arab "Sahroq" (from the desert ") is a terribly hot wind (over 40 C) tropical dry from the south or south-east, falls in summer on Sicily. Wind that originates in the African desert burn Sicily and sometimes even brings sand from the desert of Sahara. Catania is the hottest city in Sicily, hot summers exceeds 45 C. It was measured a temperature of 48.5 C Catenanuova August 10, 1999. History

Brief Chronology

Sicily mythological

Syracuse : Fountain of Arethusa

Many legends are set in Sicily:

  • Arethusa : see Syracuse
  • The architect of the labyrinth of Crete , took refuge in Sicily to the king Cocalos. Having escaped the labyrinth of King Minos , the latter sought through many jurisdictions, it then had the idea to launch a challenge that only a man like Daedalus could succeed. He promised a large reward to anyone who successfully passing a wire through the holes of a shell. To meet the challenge, Daedalus had the idea to hook the wire to an ant, then it crossed all the holes in the shell. Knowing that a person had passed the challenge to Sicily, Minos then knew Daedalus that was there. The king refused to give Cocalos Daedalus and fought a war to Minos. The king of Crete was finally killed by the daughters of Cocalos.
  • During the gigantomachy giant Enceladus deserted the battlefield, the goddess Athena crushes under the island of Sicily, where he remains imprisoned. His breath of fire comes out of the Etna and causes earthquakes when he returns.
  • The Greek god Hephaestus was a forge in the Etna , aided by cyclops smiths. The Romans believed that Vulcan was in the eponymous island, north of Sicily. The Greek poet Pindar said that the monster Typhon lies in the mouth of Etna.
  • In the Odyssey of Homer , Odysseus and his companions landed in Sicily and meet the pastor cyclops Polyphemus. To escape, Odysseus blinds him in him bursting his one eye. Probably before he became blind, Polyphemus was in love. This love is told in two poems in Greek of the Sicilian poet Theocritus around 275 BC. AD. Polyphemus falls in love with the beautiful Galatea , a nereid (sea nymph). It prefers the Sicilian shepherd Acis. Polyphemus, who surprised the whole, kills his rival by crushing it under a rock. Galatea then changes the blood of Acis into a river bearing his name in Sicily.
  • Scylla and Charybdis , two monsters of the Strait of Messina , they threaten the shipment of the Argonauts and the crew of Ulysses.
  • The Odyssey also tells Helios, god of the sun, had herds of cattle and sheep on the island of Trinacria (Sicily). Ulysses landed there on his return to Ithaca. Duly lectured about it on vocals XI by the soothsayer Tiresias , he forbade his men to touch the sacred herds. While he sleeps, yet his hungry men slaughter cows. Helios demands vengeance from Zeus who thunders the ship of Ulysses, the investor only in passing.
  • Messina was founded by the legendary giant Orion , Segesta by survivors of the Trojan War.
  • According to Virgil , Aeneas was welcomed in Sicily Acesta and collected one of the crew of the Odyssey of Ulysses, Achaemenid.

Antiquity

The acropolis of Selinunte

The most ancient peoples of Sicily were Wildrye in western island, Sicani in the center, and Sicilians in the eastern part, they probably came from the continent, pushing westward from the island occupants older. They are the ones who gave the country its name.

Sicily was first colonized by the Phoenicians , the Carthaginians and Greeks , who left many traces (theater of Taormina , temples of Segesta , Agrigento and Selinunte among others). It was then ruled by princes called "tyrants" whose famous Dionysius the Elder and Dionysius the Younger (who hosted the philosopher Plato ).

Sicily was an issue in the Peloponnesian War between Athens to Sparta in -415 , under the influence of Alcibiades , Athens embarked on the Sicilian expedition, taking advantage of the divisions that opposed the cities of the island: Athens responded to the call of Segesta, attacked by Selinus in -416. Syracuse , Colony Corinthian, was an ally of Selinunte. Segesta appealed to Athens , even offering to pay shipping. At this time of war, loss of Euboea, and the defection of many allies of Athens had made its wheat supplies precarious. The prospect of cutting those Sicilian allies of Sparta, while conquering new sources of supply was certainly a determining factor.

Temple of Segesta

The expedition sailed under the command of Nicias , Alcibiades and Lamachus June -415. In Sicily, was killed and Lamachus Nicias was left alone at the head of the expedition. The arrival in Syracuse Gylippus , Spartan general, was losing the battle to the Athenians entrenchments around the city (October -414 ). The Athenian fleet was trapped in the harbor. The Athenians sent a relief force commanded by Demosthenes and Eurymedon. August -413 , the fleet was defeated at the Battle of Epipolae , then the army was defeated on land. Athens lost more than two hundred ships in the expedition, and fifty thousand (seven thousand prisoners of Latomie, career Syracuse).

Main article: History of Greek Sicily.

Sicily was a major strategic and economic role in the first two Punic Wars. She fell to the Romans after the victory of the consul C. Lutatius Catulus -241 in the islands Egates: This battle marked the end of the first Punic War that pitted Rome Carthage on the Sicilian theater. After this defeat, Carthage left Sicily became a Roman province and now provides a significant portion of the grain supply of Rome.

The king of Syracuse Hiero II was a staunch ally of the Romans during the Second Punic War , but his grand-son Hieronymus , -215 chooses the Carthaginian camp. After a series of victories of Hannibal, making Syracuse -212 announces reorganization foreshadows Roman and Carthaginian defeat. On the eve of the Empire, Sicily was the basis of the resistance led by Pompey last Sextus Pompey , son of Pompey.

After the fall of the Roman Empire , Sicily was invaded by Germanic peoples, then raised the Byzantine empire until the conquest Muslim from 827 to 902.

Main article: Sicily (Roman province).

Middle Ages

Inside the Palatine Chapel in Palermo. The decoration of mosaics and stucco mixture reflects the influences Norman, Byzantine and Muslim in Norman Sicily

Sicily

Main article: Emirate of Sicily.

Passed during the ninth century Arab-Berber-dominated , Sicily is at the beginning of IX century , under the control of Fatimid conquerors of North Africa supported by the Berber tribe of the Algerian Kutama. The government is entrusted to the dynasty kalbide (in) the Banu Abi l-Husayn who will be the hereditary emirs for over a century. During this period of Islamization, Arabization and berbrisation will be more extreme than large migratory wave Berber follow famine that struck North Africa from 1004 to 1040. This period of Muslim rule nearly 250 years ( Palermo was a Muslim town of 831 to 1071 ) will be a period of cultural diversity and religious tolerance Norman Sicily

A family of Norman squires (the son of Tancred de Hauteville ) who conquered the land in southern Italy, the Pope instructed the younger, Roger , to invade Sicily to convert to Catholicism, and gave him sovereignty over the land take. The Norman conquest of the island took place in thirty years 1060 - 1090. The little son of Roger I. succeeded to build the island kingdom feudal 1130. Roger II , an admirer of Islamic culture, "continued the policy of tolerance of its predecessors. The administration of the Norman kings was cosmopolitan: it assembled Greeks, Lombards, British and Arabs. This syncretism is found in the art of this era that combines inputs novels , Islamic and Greek. The island enjoyed a period of prosperity, particularly in agriculture.

The throne then passed by inheritance to the dynasty of Germanic Hohenstaufen , who ruled the region from 1194 and adopted Palermo as the capital in 1220. It was through his marriage with the daughter of Roger II, the Emperor Henry VI establishes its sovereignty over Sicily. His son, Emperor Frederick II , spent most of his life in the island.

Conflict between the Hohenstaufen and the papacy led in 1266 to conquer the island by Charles I , Count of Anjou and brother of the king of France Louis IX. This displeased the Sicilians by moving to Naples and distributing fiefs of the French. On 30 March 1282 , the day of Easter , riots, the Sicilian Vespers , caused by excessive taxes and operated by Peter III of Aragon and Michael VIII Palaeologus , provoked the massacre of the French conquest of Sicily and the island Catalan King Peter III of Aragon.

The late Middle Ages were a period of crisis for Sicily: the black plague depopulated the region and the struggles of the nobility create a negative climate. The Inquisition was established in 1487.

Early modern and contemporary

Castiglione di Sicilia

The Spanish period is marked by a relative decline of Sicily. The company is dominated by an aristocracy and a Church that enjoy substantial privileges.

During the revolutionary period, Sicily remains with the Bourbon Ferdinand III of Sicily (1759-1816), thanks to British protection while the French settled in the southern Italian peninsula. Attempts to reform the constitution to end of 1812 and the abolition of feudal privileges. A middle class began to form. But these efforts are undermined by the return of the Bourbons, who unified the two kingdoms and settled in Naples. From that date, several revolts against the reactionary policies of the Bourbons (refusal to institute a government constitutional ) fail. In 1820, revolutionaries seeking independence from Palermo on the island. The 1848 revolution and agrarian particularist.

Sicily in Italy

After the landing of Giuseppe Garibaldi , Sicily approve, 12 October 1860 , a hotly contested plebiscite for annexation to Piedmont State - Voting is under the threat of military occupation and was not secret. The following year, March 17th 1861 , the State changed its name to Piedmont in the Kingdom of Italy and Sicily became part of Italy.

In Sicily and southern Italy a vast guerrilla People (the Brigantaggio) resistance against the Piedmontese and the new Italian government, which lasted more than 10 years, gave rise to a violent military crackdown led by the Italian army. It caused in the early years hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, thousands of prisoners, destruction of villages, the economic collapse across the South and a huge wave of immigration unprecedented in the history of island, which brought millions of Sicilians abroad.

Before the union with Italy, Sicily has been one of the richest regions of Italy and developed. Palermo and the Conca d'Oro enriched with the export of citrus , especially lemon , and a certain industrial and economic development emerges, supported by two large families of Palermo, Florio (it) , represented from 1891 by Ignazio Florio Jr. , one of the largest fortunes in Italy, and the side by Whitaker, owners of the villa will become the Grand Hotel des Palmes, where Wagner conducted in winter 1881-82 his last opera, Parsifal. The influence of Florio is such that the press refers to as the Palermo "Floriopoli", while the upper class European Belle poque is pouring into the city to admire its opulence.

p> But then all of Sicily and southern Italy were devastated, for the North, which created large industrial and urban areas. The historians place the birth of the networks of organized crime from the late nineteenth century , then spread their influence around the world. The Mafia was suppressed at the beginning of the fascist era, but this ceased during the 1930s. After the Second World War , she took advantage of the Allied landings in 1943, the black market and reconstruction to bring about a renaissance and bind to the Italian-American mafia in the market for heroin.

Since 1946 , Sicily is an autonomous region and has benefited from land reform partial 1950 - 1962 , special grants from the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the Italian government funding for the South and more recently Aid European (Objective I).

One of the biggest challenges for Sicily is the fight against the Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra ), socially rooted criminal organization and who uses his power through a network of patronage. It extorts money from companies by Pizzo and infiltrates the economy through multiple bidding rigged, forming an effective barrier to the development of the region, and has distinguished itself in the years 1950-60 by the sack of Palermo.

Moreover, the island of Lampedusa regularly attracts media attention by the boat people without papers who arrive there or are unloaded, then locked up in detention centers before being deported.

Culture

Sicily has a rich cultural heritage, a legacy of its history with many influences.

Heritage of Unesco

High Places

Etna

List is not exhaustive.

  • Palermo
  • Segesta
  • Selinunte
  • Cefal
  • Taormina
  • Etna
  • Fountain Acadine
  • Erice
  • Piazza Armerina Villa Casale
  • Erice
  • Egadi Islands
  • Aeolian Islands
  • Zingaro Nature Reserve
  • Monreale
  • Valley of the Temples Agrigento
  • Catania
  • Acireale
  • Noto
  • Modica
  • Syracuse-Ortigia
  • Regional Nature Park Madonie
  • Regional Nature Park Nebrodi
  • Ragusa
  • Gulf of Castellammare
  • Trapani
  • Sciacca, Eraclea Minoa
  • Caltanissetta
  • Caltagirone
  • Tindari

Economy

General Information

In 2006 , the GDP (gross domestic product) of Sicily reached 82 938 600 000 euros, and GDP per capita is 16 531.50 euros. The number of companies amounted to 234 623. The economy is predominantly commercial, with some development of agriculture and low industrialization. The region is suffering as the whole Mezzogiorno of backwardness and a high unemployment rate.

Tourism

It is a major sectors of the Sicilian economy. The island is indeed with a large and diverse tourist offer, combining among other seaside tourism and cultural tourism. Millions of tourists flock each year and the province of Messina is the most touristy, with 5 million annual visitors.

Market Scene in Palermo

Agriculture

Agriculture occupies an important place in the regional economy. The island has a rich and fertile land (volcanic and / or clay-limestone). Agriculture (wine, olive oil , vegetables, wheat , almonds , pomegranates , citrus , especially lemons , and tangerines as those Croceverde Giardini , or the bergamot and papyrus ), sector representing 10% of assets, maintains a weight factor in the Sicilian economy. Nearly 1,734,200 acres of land are cultivated or 67% of the area of the island. Vegetables and crops futures are higher value added. Currently, Syracuse is the only place in Europe where you can find in Egyptian papyri.

Fishing

Fishing is also an important place in maritime communities. Tuna fishing is a major activity.

Wine

Sicily has more vineyards than any other region of Italy. The most famous wines are those produced near Noto and Marsala , in the first case it is the Nero d'Avola, in the second case it is the Grillo ( Marsala (DOC) ).

Industry

Sicily is not a heavily industrial area, although mine sulfur have been heavily exploited in the late nineteenth century. One plant was done under the guidance of state policies, through the "Fund for the Mezzogiorno. The result of these policies was the creation of genuine "cathedrals in the desert" as the petrochemical center in Syracuse. The industry is present throughout the oil and natural gas in the southeast of the island. In total, the industry contributes to gross domestic product of Sicily almost as much as agriculture.

Transport

General Information

Sicily has long suffered from a lack of infrastructure.

There are two major airports ( Palermo airport to the west of Catania airport to the east) which provide connections to the rest of Italy and from abroad.

Maritime transport is very developed, especially because of the insularity. The port of Messina, 3 km from Calabria, is connecting mainland Italy by bus, and allows links between road and rail networks on both sides of the Strait of Messina. Passenger and commercial traffic to the rest of Italy are through the major ports of the island.

The road network consists of motorways A18 (Messina-Catania, Syracuse and soon extended until Gela), A19 (Palermo-Catania), A20 (Messina-Palermo), A29 (Palerme-Trapani/Mazara Del Vallo). Many secondary roads structure the territory.

The rail network provides links between major cities. However, train traffic is slow.

Messina Bridge Project

A bridge suspended 5,300 meters between Sicily and the Italian peninsula has been proposed by the Italian government, the Messina Bridge. The decision to build the bridge, under the leadership of the right of Silvio Berlusconi , is highly contested by some political left, and the government of Romano Prodi was suspended in 2006. However, the return to power of the right could revive the project Administration and Policy

Sicily is an autonomous region of Italy , recognition by Rome of its particularism associated with its insularity. The Region has made it much greater powers than other regions.

Politically, the region is marked by the centrist Catholic vote. Bastion of the Christian Democrats until its collapse in the early 1990s, Sicily vote right now, regardless of political shifts at the national level. Independence movements are underdeveloped at present and the autonomy movements are most often integrated into national political life, such as the Movement for Autonomy , defendant's southern and ally of Silvio Berlusconi.

Personalities

Sicilians in history

People from Sicily

Filmography on Sicily

  • Stessa Luna , a documentary film 52 ' Frances Gallo , 2006, France 3; Selections: FIPA 2007; Carthage JCC 2007; Doc in Tunis 2009.
  • The avventura , a film by Michelangelo Antonioni , 1960, without being a film about Sicily gives to see many landscapes of the island
  • Sedotta abbandonata e, a film by Pietro Germi, with Stefania Sandrelli, Saro Urzi, Aldo Puglisi (1964) a film based on the mentality of the era, jealousy and honor to the Sicilian.
  • The Cheetah , a film by Luchino Visconti (1963)
  • The Godfather (Mario Puzo's The Godfather), The Godfather II (Mario Puzo's The Godfather: Part II), The Godfather III (Mario Puzo's The Godfather: Part III) films of Francis Ford Coppola (1972, 1974, 1990), including many scenes take place in Sicily, landscape key to the trilogy.

Notes

See also

Internal Links

Related articles:

External Links

  • Sicily www.itinerarisicilia.it

Category Sicily directory dmoz

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