Sicily

Part of the content is taken from Sicily on Wikipedia part from various other sources,when quoted.Part is personal. Keep Checking the blogs for links and news from now on -Content will be added there.:D
INTRODUCTION
Sicily (Sicilia in Italian and Sicilian) 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.
Sicily is adjacent to the region of Calabria through the Strait of Messina , on the east coast .Messina is the 3rd largest city in the island and is its main access being situated on the sicilian side of the strait, ehile the other one in continental italy hosts the city of Reggio Calabria
The volcano Etna, situated not longer from Catania, is 3,320 m (10,900 ft) high,meaning it's the tallest volcano existing in Europe. It is also one of the world's most active ones.
The territory includes the Aeolian islands to the north , 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.
PRODUCTS
Sicily has been noted for two millennia as a grain-producing territory: olives and excellent wines like the Alcamo's and the Avola's ones are some of its other agricultural products. The area of the Enna and Caltanissetta district hosted a leading sulphur-producing mines in the 19th century, but they seem they have declined since the 1950s.
Sicily's main cities :
the regional capital Palermo, together with the other provincial capitals Catania, Messina, Siracusa , Trapani, Enna, Caltanissetta, Agrigento, Ragusa.
A few other Sicilian towns :
Acireale, main center north from Catania , close to the Odysseus'locations (Aci Trezza)
Bagheria, famous for Baroque Buildings
Partinico, important center for wines
Alcamo, famous for wines, spas, and literature.
Caltagirone,town of Pottery
Santo Stefano di Camastra, town of Pottery
Cefalù, Norman art
Bronte, famous for Pistachio's
Randazzo,
Marsala,famous for wines and for Phoenician remains
Corleone, the town of the "Godfather" and Saint Bernard
Castellammare del Golfo, fishermen's haven
Calatafimi,ruins of the old town of Segesta
Gela, various industries, harbour
Sciacca, popular Carnival and spas.
Mistretta, main center of Nebrodi Mountains
Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto,
Santa Agata di Militello ,
Mazara del Vallo, fishermen's town and Muslim peoples influences.
Licata,
Vittoria,
Augusta, important harbour and old site
Taormina, very important Greek remains and scenographic views.
Castevetrano, close to the old Selinunte
Milazzo,
Piana degli Albanesi, Albanian athmosphere
Piazza Armerina, Roman Remains
Belmonte Mezzagno, wonderful scenographic main square and Calvary Feast.
Marineo: old Castle, Feast of "A cunnutta" [about St.Cyrus' life]
Petralia Sottana, main center of Madonie Mountains, famous for the "Dance of the Little String" [Ballo della Cordella]
St. Biagio Platani, famous for painted bread sculptures
FLAG
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. "Trinacria" literally means "three legs" and is representative of the three points of the island. The head shown on the Sicilian trinacria is the face of Medusa. However, before the Roman Empire, the head was the sun. The trinacria symbol is used also by the Isle of Man in its flag.Other flags have been used during Sicily history, but the ones using stripes in colours red and yellow come from the fact that the island has been subjected for long time to Spain [red and yellow are indeed either the colours of the Catalan flag and the Spanish one]Instead, the traditional flag which is used officially also by the Sicilian Region , reports the red and yellow colours in 2 divided fields too but the 2 colours represent the colours of Cities of Corleone and Palermo :
Quote from
Allstates-flag.com :
"Why was a field divided red and yellow chosen? The first red and yellow Sicilian flag dates from the anti-French rising of Sicilian Vespers on 30 March 1282 (the revolt of the Sicilians against King Charles d'Anjou, which would bring to the throne Pierre III of Aragon. In effect, the cities of Palermo and Corleone would be the first to rise agains the Angevins; Palermo also possessed a red civic flag (still the current one) while that of Corleone was yellow. Some sources also indicate that yellow is the colour of independence, while the red is that of the revolution... Moreover, several red and yellow flags existed in different forms, although unofficial until 4 Jan 2000, the date of adoption of the actual flag".
ARTS
Sicily is well known as a region of art: many poets and writers were born here, 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
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 Italic peoples 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 BCE. The most important colony was established at Syracuse in 734 BCE. 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 BCE, named Zis or Sis ("Panormos" to the Greeks). Hundreds of Phoenician and Carthaginian grave sites have been found in necropolis 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 415 BCE, Syracuse became an object of Athenian imperialism as exemplified in the disastrous events of the Sicilian Expedition which reignited the cooling Peloponnesian War.
In the 3rd century BCE 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 BCE) 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 BCE 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 as recorded by Cicero in 70 BCE in his oration, In Verrem.
In 440 CE Sicily fell to the Vandal king Genseric. 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 827-902. It is reported in contemporary accounts that Sicilians spoke Greek or Italo-Greek dialects until at least the 10th century, and in some regions for several more centuries
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). During this period, Sicily became one of the wealthiest states in Europe, and according to historian John Julius Norwich, Palermo under the Normans became wealthier than the England of its day. After only a century however, the Norman Hauteville dynasty died out and the south German (Swabian) Hohenstaufen dynasty 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. The resulting War of the Sicilian Vespers lasted until the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302. Sicily was ruled as an independent kingdom by relatives of the kings of Aragon until 1409 and then as part of the Crown of Aragon.
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.
Sicily was the scene of major revolutionary movements in 1820 and 1848 against Bourbon denial of constitutional government. The 1848 revolution resulted in a sixteen month period of independence from the Bourbons before its armed forces took back control of the island on 15 May 1849.
Sicily was joined with the kingdom of Italy in 1860 following the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi and the resultant Risorgimento.
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, l eading to an unprecedented wave of emigration. In 1894 labour agitation through the radical Fasci dei lavoratori led again to the imposition of martial law.
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.
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. Modern methods of genetic testing enable us to see which have had the greatest demographic impact. Several studies show strong ties between Sicily, mainland southern Italy and Greece, suggesting that the Siculi, Elymi and Greek colonizations were the most important.
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,Uruguay, Argentina, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Venezuela and other EU countries. The island today, like all of western Europe, is home to growing communities of immigrants, including Tunisians, Moroccans, Nigerians, Indians, Romanians, Russians, Chinese and Gypsies from the Balkans.
LANGUAGE
Many Sicilians are bilingual in both Italian and Sicilian, a separate Romance language, descended from Greek, Arabic, 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 people.
The Sicilian language generally uses the word ending -O[pronounced like an english 'oo'] for singular masculine nouns and adjectives, and A[ like the 'a' in the word 'car'] for feminine. The plural is usually an unstressed e [this means you hear the sound of an undistinguished vowel that is charactheristic of the southern italian regions , just think of the vowel I in the word 'bird', for instance ] for both masculine and feminine, although, it's litterarily spelled as I for both genders in poetry. 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]. Notice that E, I, O have different sound depending if stressed or unstressed:just think of the position the letter has in the correspond italian word, and you got the picture:
STRESSED:
E= ITALIAN E;
I=ITALIAN I;
O=O ITALIAN O
UNSTRESSED
E= LIKE THE I IN THE WORD 'BIRD';
I=LIKE THE I IN THE WORD 'BIRD';
O= LIKE 'OO ' IN THE WORD 'COOL'
The Correspondent italian "-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 literary Sicilian, this sound is written simply as "-dd-" although the sound itself is not [d] but rather [?]. For example, the Italian word bello is almost like pronounced beddu in Sicilian.
Other minorities
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
Historical monarchs of Sicily
Monarchs of Naples and Sicily
* Roger I of Sicily, Count of Sicily 1072 – 1101
* Simon, Count of Sicily, 1101 – 1105
* Adelaide del Vasto, Regent of Sicily 1101 – 1112, mother of Simon and Roger II
* Roger II of Sicily, Count of Sicily 1113 – 1130, King of Sicily 1130 – 1154
* William I of Sicily, King of Sicily 1154 – 1166
* William II of Sicily, King of Sicily 1166 – 1189
* Tancred of Sicily, King of Sicily 1189 – 1194
* William III of Sicily, King of Sicily 1194
* Constance of Sicily, Queen of Sicily 1194 – 1198 and mother of Frederick II
* Frederick II (1194 – 1250), Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily (Frederick I of Sicily)
* Conrad I of Sicily (and Conrad IV of Germany), King of Sicily 1250 – 1254
* Conradin, King of Sicily 1254 – 1258
* Manfred of Sicily, King of Sicily 1258 – 1266
* Frederick III of Sicily, King of Sicily 1296 – 1337
* Peter II of Sicily, King of Sicily 1337 – 1342
* Louis of Sicily, King of Sicily 1342 – 1355
* Frederick III the Simple, King of Sicily 1355 – 1377
* Mary of Sicily, Queen of Sicily 1377 – 1402
* Martin I of Sicily, King of Sicily 1390 – 1409