History UsefulNotes / Sicily

The situation in Sicily led to massive emigration to other countries, most notably to America, where they had a profound effect on American culture (particularly its [[UsefulNotes/CuisinesInAmerica cuisine]]), though frequently hybridized with other (mostly Southern) Italian groups (especially Neapolitans/Campanians[[note]]Who came in similarly large numbers for similar reasons, though replace "Mafia" with "Camorra."[[/note]]). While most Sicilian immigrants were hard-working citizens, proud immigrant families and key parts of the working-class movements of the 19th and 20th Century, some of them were gangsters, and through them, the Sicilian Mafia became involved in American organized crime. The Mafia paradoxically became a holdout for opposition against Mussolini's UsefulNotes/FascistItaly who sent a special prefect to suppress them.

-->-- '''Film/TheGodfather Part III'''

The island of Sicily has its own language and its own culture, like every other region in Italy but Sicilians take it up to eleven with its regionalism. The island of Sicily after all has joined Italy just 150 years ago, and for most of its history had been regarded as barely part of the peninsula. Since the 8th century BCE[[note]]And even before, as there are archaelogical evidences that can trace the interactions between Sicily and mainland Greece back to the Bronze Age[[/note]] Sicily has been melting pot of native tribesmen, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Germanic tribes (Goths, Vandals), Arabs, Norse-French Normans, and then Spaniards. Sicily has a history unlike any other place in the world, being simultaneously on the margins of great powers but also absolutely at the center of any shift in the BalanceOfPower in the Mediterranean. It's just not possible to understand a huge significant part of European history without understanding how the island fit into it, and taking into account its immense strategic importance. On account of its geographical position at the "neck" of the hourglass-shaped Mediterranean Sea, it has frequently been the center of war and power struggles among different powers. Many of the key incidents in the history of Ancient World have taken place in Sicily.

[[VideoGame/YouDontKnowJack If Italy is a boot, then Sicily is the football]]. It gets tossed back and forth between various great powers, and get screwed over left, right, and center. Its position in the exact middle of the Mediterranean (between Europe and Africa, and between Western and Eastern Europe) has led the island to be conquered quite often by foreign powers. It is the largest island of the Mediterranean, home of Mount Etna, and the site of 7 UNESCO World Heritage sites and it is an autonomous region of UsefulNotes/RepublicanItaly (one of five to enjoy said status).

[[VideoGame/YouDontKnowJack If Italy is a boot, then Sicily is the football]]. It gets tossed back and forth between various great powers, and get screwed over left, right, and center. Its position in the exact middle of the Mediterrean (between Europe and Africa, and between Western and Eastern Europe) has led the island to be conquered quite often by foreign powers. It is the largest island of the Mediterranean, home of Mount Etna, and the site of 7 UNESCO World Heritage sites and it is an autonomous region of UsefulNotes/RepublicanItaly (one of five to enjoy said status).

* The second season of ''Series/TheWhiteLotus'' will be set in one of the eponymous resort chain's properties on Sicily.

* ''Series/TheGoldenGirls'': Sophia is an Italian immigrant from Sicily. She and her late husband Sal moved to the US in the 1920's or 30's where they had their children. It's a RunningGag that she constantly recounts tales of Sicily as a dirt-poor gangland where priests get thrown out of windows and the two biggest exports are ransom notes and [[RazorFloss piano wire]]. Given her age (she would've been born in the early 1900's), this isn't much of an exaggeration.

* ''Film/TheLeopard'' by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, considered one of the Italian novels of the 20th century, describes the changing societal landscape of Sicily over a period from 1860 to 1910. The central character, Prince Fabrizio, describes Sicily well:

** ''Film/TheLeopard'' is the most famous, an adaptation of the famous novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and considered one of the greatest films ever made. Creator/BurtLancaster's Prince Fabrizio describes Sicily well:
--> '''Prince Fabrizio''': ''Sleep...that is what Sicilians want. And they will always resent anyone who tries to awaken them, even to bring them the most wonderful of gifts. And, between ourselves, I doubt very strongly whether this new Kingdom has very many gifts for us in its luggage. All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really a wish for death. Our sensuality, wish for oblivion. Our knifings and shootings, a hankering after extinction. Our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a desire for voluptuous immobility, that is... for death again.''

UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic's interference in the affairs of Sicily led to the UsefulNotes/PunicWars. During the Second Punic War, Sicily, which largely backed Hannibal faced a siege and invasion by the Romans. The city-state of Syracuse was the home of the great scientist Archimedes, who was subsequently killed by a Roman legionnaire, despite orders to spare him. Sicilians under Rome often gave hell to the Republic. It was the site of two slave revolts, the first and second Servile Wars (overshadowed by the Third Servile War on account of ''Film/{{Spartacus}}''). The first one was led by Eunus, who claimed to be a Prophet, and the second one was led by a man named Salvius, who took the name Typhoon. Creator/{{Cicero}} made his political debut by denouncing the abuses of the corrupt Roman governor of Sicily, Verres. After UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar was assassinated, the Assassins and their supporters waged a civil war, and even after Brutus and Co. died in Philippi Greece, an independent non-Roman state based in Sicily held out against the Second Triumvirate. It was led by Sextus Pompey (son of UsefulNotes/PompeyTheGreat) and it led to Augustus launching a major amphibian campaign to take it down. Under Sextus Pompey, Sicily was a Roman province, and this was more or the last time Sicily would ever be independent of Rome until the end of the Western Roman Empire.

Eventually Norman Sicily fell to the House of Hohenstaufen of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and the island became part of the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. For a time the Kingdom of Sicily became divided between the island proper, which belonged to the King of Aragon, and the mainland Kingdom of Naples, ruled by the Angevin branch of the French Capetians, though both were, confusingly, still officially known as the [[NamesTheSame Kingdom of Sicily]]. Even when the Spanish managed to conquer Naples, they would not be officially reunited until after UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, when they were merged into The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

* The famous line in ''Film/ThePrincessBride''.

-->-- '''Vizzini''', '''''Film/ThePrincessBride'''''

Norman Sicily was something of a marvel in Medieval Europe, especially under Roger II. Because it had been a battleground between Muslims, Greeks and Lombards, there were significant populations of each, this along with Sicily's position smack dab in the middle of every major Mediterranean trade route gave it a distinctly cosmopolitan flavour. The Hautevilles encouraged this inviting Greek, Muslim and Latin scholars to their court and commissioning translations of many Greek and Arab Texts (Some of which were themselves translations from the original Greek) into Latin. This has left a massive Greek and Arab influence on the Sicilian tongue, enough that many linguists consider it to be a separate language from Italian rather than a dialect.

The island of Sicily has its own language and its own culture, like every other region in Italy but Sicilians take it UpToEleven with its regionalism. The island of Sicily after all has joined Italy just 150 years ago, and for most of its history had been regarded as barely part of the peninsula. Since the 8th century BCE[[note]]And even before, as there are archaelogical evidences that can trace the interactions between Sicily and mainland Greece back to the Bronze Age[[/note]] Sicily has been melting pot of native tribesmen, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Germanic tribes (Goths, Vandals), Arabs, Norse-French Normans, and then Spaniards. Sicily has a history unlike any other place in the world, being simultaneously on the margins of great powers but also absolutely at the center of any shift in the BalanceOfPower in the Mediterranean. It's just not possible to understand a huge significant part of European history without understanding how the island fit into it, and taking into account its immense strategic importance. On account of its geographical position at the "neck" of the hourglass-shaped Mediterranean Sea, it has frequently been the center of war and power struggles among different powers. Many of the key incidents in the history of Ancient World have taken place in Sicily.

* ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonorAlliedAssault'''s ''Breakthrough'' ExpansionPack features Operation ''Husky'', the Allied Invasion of Sicily, as the setting of the entire second campaign mission. Sgt. John Baker, temporarily reassigned to glider infantry, helps American and British paratroopers destroy Axis AntiAir batteries, sabotage Regia Aeronautica fighters at Caltagirone, and finally help capture and hold the town of Gela.
* ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonorVanguard'' and ''VideoGame/MedalofHonorAirborne'' have Operation ''Husky'' serve as the opening level, where Keegan and Travers must help capture vital Sicilian towns held by Italian and German troops.

* A number of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII films are also set in Sicily:

Eventually Norman Sicily fell to the House of Hohenstaufen of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and the island became part of the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. For a time the Kingdom of Sicily became divided between the island proper, which belonged to the King of Aragon, and the mainland Kingdom of Naples, ruled the Angevin branch of the French Capetians, though both were, confusingly, still officially known as the [[NamesTheSame Kingdom of Sicily]]. Even when the Spanish managed to conquer Naples, they would not be officially reunited until after UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, when they were merged into The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the Allies like Alcibiades, Belisarius, the Arabs, Normans and Garibaldi before them, sought Sicily as a key naval base to take over the rest of the island and topple Mussolini. Under Allied occupation, the Mafia returned to Sicily and while their power and influence waned in the New World, and withered slowly in Italy, the are still there as a significant presence, with their secret client-patronage networks punching far above its weight. High profile assassinations of prominent politicians continued in the post-war era. Sicily has historically been close to the centre of gravity but often at the expense of the Sicilian people. The constant foreign influx into the island nation has left its mark on regional politics, leaving a mess of grudges and feuds between villagers and classes who feel one or the other, at various times, someone or the other has profited under some earlier foreigner or the other, leading itself to a vendetta culture that the Sicilians themselves seem to take a perverse pleasure in, at least in the eyes of notable Sicilian writers like Giovanni Verga, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Luigi Pirandello.

[[VideoGame/YouDontKnowJack If Italy is a boot, then Sicily is the football]]. It gets tossed back and forth between various great powers, and get screwed over left-right and center. Its position in the exact middle of the Mediterrean (between Europe and Africa, and between Western and Eastern Europe) has led the island to be conquered quite often by foreign powers. It is the largest island of the Mediterranean, home of Mount Etna, and the site of 7 UNESCO World Heritage sites and it is an autonomous region of UsefulNotes/RepublicanItaly (one of five to enjoy said status).

-->-- '''Film/TheGodfather''', ''Part Three''

The island of Sicily has its own language and its own culture, like every other region in Italy but Sicilians take it UpToEleven with its regionalism. The island of Sicily after all has joined Italy just 150 ago, and for most of its history ha been regarded as barely part of the peninsula. Since the 8th century BCE[[note]]And even before, as there are archaelogical evidences that can trace the interactions between Sicily and mainland Greece back to the Bronze Age[[/note]] Sicily has been melting pot of native tribesmen, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Germanic tribes (Goths, Vandals), Arabs, Norse-French Normans, and then Spaniards. Sicily has a history unlike any other place in the world, being simultaneously on the margins of great powers but also absolutely at the center of any shift in the BalanceOfPower in the Mediterranean. It's just not possible to understand a huge significant part of European history without understanding how the island fit into it, and taking into account its immense strategic importance. On account of its geographical position at the "neck" of the hourglass-shaped Mediterranean Sea, it has frequently been the center of war and power struggles among different powers. Many of the key incidents in the history of Ancient World have taken place in Sicily.

->'''Kay''':''"This is dangerous for you. This is Sicily."''
->'''Michael''':''"I love this country."''
->'''Kay''':''"Why?"''
->'''Michael''':''"Well, all through history, terrible things have happened to these people. Terrible injustices. But they still expect good, rather than bad, will happen to them."''

After Rome fell, UsefulNotes/{{Italy}} once again became divided into multiple warring states, but because of its riches and prestige, every aspiring great power wanted a part of it. And do you know, which is the island that serves as the nice landing area for an amphibian invasion of The Boot? The answer was obvious to UsefulNotes/FlaviusBelisarius who conquered it first for Justinian I's campaign to retake Italy, and he used that as a base. Later during the rise of the Islamic caliphates, they took over and settled on the island, getting rid of the Byzantines on the island before being in turn removed by the Normans who established the Kingdom of Sicily under Roger I of the Hauteville dynasty. This was a major spark that led to UsefulNotes/TheCrusades, since both UsefulNotes/ThePope and the UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire were unhappy about a new great power in the Mediterranean. Eventually Norman Sicily fell to the House of Hohenstaufen of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and the island became part of the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. After them, the Spanish Empire then took over: Sicily along with Naples were two major parts of Southern Italy ruled by the Spanish Crown. After UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, they were merged into The Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic's interference in the affairs of Sicily led to the UsefulNotes/PunicWars. During the Second Punic War, Sicily, which largely backed Hannibal faced a siege and invasion by the Romans. The city-state of Syracuse was the home of the great scientist Archimedes, who was subsequently killed by a Roman legionnaire, despite orders to spare him. Sicilians under Rome often gave hell to the Republic. It was the site of two slave revolts, the first and second Servile Wars (overshadowed by the Third Servile War on account of ''Film/{{Spartacus}}''). The first one was led by Eunus, who claimed to be a Prophet, and the second one was led by a man named Salvius, who took the name Typhoon. Creator/{{Cicero}} made his political debut by denouncing the abuses of the corrupt Roman governor of Sicily, Verres. After UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar was assassinated, the Assassins and their supporters waged a civil war, and even after Brutus and Co. died in Philippi Greece, an independent non-Roman state based in Sicily held out against the Second Triumvirate. It was led by Sextus Pompey (son of UsefulNotes/PompeyTheGreat) and it led to Augustus launching a major amphibian campaign to take it down. Under Sextus Pompey, Sicily was a Roman province, and this was more or the last time Sicily would ever be independent of Rome until the end of the Western Roman Empire. Sicily was the first province of the Roman Empire, and that should mark that Sicily at the time was not seen as part of the Italian peninsula at all. After all, the island was culturally and ethnically Greek, and could not be Romanized easily as it happened in mainland Italy. So the Romans installed their administration and settlers came in, but the island largely retained its Greek character and influence.

** Unrelated to Mt. Etna, the Strait of Messina, located between Sicily and Calabria, is considered the traditional location of Scylla and Charybdis. [[ArtisticLicenseGeography This in spite of]] that the feature as antagonists in ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', a legendary journey from [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Troy]] to [[UsefulNotes/{{Greece}} Ithaca]], both of which are located in the ''Eastern'' Mediterranean, suggesting that Odysseus was ''way'' off-course. (Then again, he ''was'' [[CosmicPlaything cursed by Poseidon]]...)

** Unrelated to Mt. Etna, the Strait of Messina, located between Sicily and Calabria, is considered the traditional location of Scylla and Charybdis. [[ArtisticLicenseGeography This in spite of] that the feature as antagonists in ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', a legendary journey from [[UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} Troy]] to [[UsefulNotes/{{Greece}} Ithaca]], both of which are located in the ''Eastern'' Mediterranean, suggesting that Odysseus was ''way'' off-course. (Then again, he ''was'' [[CosmicPlaything cursed by Poseidon]]...)

At the beggining of its history, Greek settlers founded several cities in the eastern coast (and some of them still exist in modern times, making them among the oldest cities in Europe) that grew and prospered. The most important city was Syracuse, who would be retain this position until the Middle Ages, when its importance declined in favor of its current capital, Palermo. These Greek city-states were at times ruled by tyrants, and were often at war with the remaining native tribes and the Carthaginian settlers in the Western half of the island. Sicily was then the centre of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition in UsefulNotes/ThePeloponnesianWar, that eventually played a major part in the end of the Delian League, and Alicibiades' poor management and defection to Sparta was invoked as justification to execute Creator/{{Socrates}}, who was Alcibiades' mentor.

UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic's interference in the affairs of Sicily led to the UsefulNotes/PunicWars. During the second Punic War, Sicily, which largely backed Hannibal faced a siege and invasion by the Romans. The city-state of Syracuse was the home of the great scientist Archimedes, who was subsequently killed by a Roman legionnaire, despite orders to spare him. Sicilians under Rome often gave hell to the Republic. It was the site of two slave revolts, the first and second Servile Wars (overshadowed by the Third Servile War on account of ''Film/{{Spartacus}}''). The first one was led by Eunus, who claimed to be a Prophet, and the second one was led by a man named Salvius, who took the name Typhoon. Creator/{{Cicero}} made his political debut by denouncing the abuses of the corrupt Roman governor of Sicily, Verres. After UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar was assassinated, the Assassins and their supporters waged a civil war, and even after Brutus and Co. died in Philippi Greece, an independent non-Roman state based in Sicily held out against the Second Triumvirate. It was led by Sextus Pompey (son of UsefulNotes/PompeyTheGreat) and it led to Augustus launching a major amphibian campaign to take it down. Under Sextus Pompey, Sicily was a Roman province, and this was more or the last time Sicily would ever be independent from Rome until the end of the Western Roman Empire. Sicily was the first province of the Roman Empire, and that should mark that Sicily at the time was not seen as part of the Italian peninsula at all. After all, the island was culturally and ethnically Greek, and could not be Romanized easily as it happened in mainland Italy. So the Romans installed their administration and settlers came in, but the island largely retained its Greek character and influence.

After Rome fell, UsefulNotes/{{Italy}} once again became divided into multiple warring states, but because of its riches and prestige, every aspiring great power wanted a part of it. And do you know, which is the island that serves as the nice landing area for an amphibian invasion of The Boot? The answer was obvious to UsefulNotes/FlaviusBelisarius who conquered it first for Justinian I's campaign to retake Italy, and he used that as a base. Later during the rise of the Arab Empires, they took over and settled on the island, getting rid of the Byzantines on the island before being in turn removed by the Normans who established the Kingdom of Sicily under Roger I of the Hauteville dynasty. This was a major spark that led to UsefulNotes/TheCrusades, since both UsefulNotes/ThePope and the UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire were unhappy about a new great power in the Mediterranean. Eventually Norman Sicily fell to the House of Hohenstaufen of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and the island became part of the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. After them, the Spanish Empire then took over: Sicily along with Naples were two major parts of Southern Italy ruled by the Spanish Crown. After UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, they were merged into The Kingdom of Two Sicilies.