If the origins of your grandparents are Sicilian you are in the right place.

Tell us the country they emigrated from and we will take you back in time, making you retrace those places.

We will dedicate the entire tour to finding the places where they grew up and lived as young people, you will discover their customs and traditions.

Their stories will take shape and become reality…

Earthquake in the Belice Valley of 1968

The first strong shock was felt at 1:28 pm local time on 14 January, with serious damage to Montevago, Gibellina, Salaparuta and Poggioreale; a second at 2.15pm. In the same localities there was another very strong shock, which was felt up to Palermo, Trapani and Sciacca. Two and a half hours later, at 4:48 pm, there was a third shock, which caused serious damage to Gibellina, Menfi, Montevago, Partanna, Poggioreale, Salaparuta, Salemi, Santa Margherita di Belice, Santa Ninfa and Vita. During the night, at 2:33 am on January 15th, a very violent shock caused very serious damage and was felt as far as Pantelleria. But the strongest shock occurred shortly thereafter, at 3:01 am, which caused the most severe effects. This was followed by another 16 shocks

The officially ascertained victims vary: according to some sources there were a total of 231 and more than 600 injured, few compared to the damage because many inhabitants had spent the night outdoors; according to others, the victims were 296. Others even write of 370 dead, about 1,000 injured and about 70,000 displaced persons

The few walls still remaining in pied i collapsed completely following the very strong earthquake that occurred on January 25, at 10:56 am. After this last shock, the authorities also prohibited entry into the ruins of the villages of Gibellina, Montevago and Salaparuta.

345 tremors were instrumentally recorded, with 81 of these having a magnitude equal to or greater than 3 between January 14 and September 1, 1968.

The reconstruction

The years that followed the earthquake were punctuated by tenders, good intentions, proclamations, appropriations. The fact is that even today not everything has been rebuilt; and thus the fights that Danilo Dolci waged in favor of the population and against the political-mafia underworld are very topical. His commitment is legendary, the sentences written on the walls of the ruins, such as: "The bureaucracy kills more than the earthquake", "Here people were killed in fragile homes and by those who prevented them from regaining possession of life with work" .

Overall, for a reconstruction not fully completed, more than 6 billion euros were spent at current values

 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terremoto_del_Belice_del_1968

Bosco Ficuzza

Ficuzza, 682 m a.s.l., is a fraction of the municipality of Corleone in the province of Palermo

In 1800, King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon chose Ficuzza as the Royal Hunting Reserve and a magnificent royal palace was built on the slopes of the wood.

The reserve is home to 80% of animal species, including birds and wildlife, of the entire Sicilian Region, the golden eagle, the peregrine falcon, the Egyptian vulture, the kite, the hoopoe and the blackbirds deserve particular attention. Woods and lakes offer a highly sought after game: wild boar, fallow deer, roe deer, and even wolves, foxes and hares.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficuzza

Corleone

Corleone (Cunigghiuni or Curliùni in Sicilian) is an Italian town of 10 900 inhabitants

The visiting card of the city is the splendid scenery of the Ficuzza wood, extending around 5000 hectares and dominated by the Rocca Busambra massif, where the Royal Eagle still nests. Together with the palace of King Ferdinand of Bourbon, built at the end of the 18th century.

It is a strange city, where past and present intertwine and merge, in the search for a future that does not miss anything of the past. A glorious past, but also made up of blood shed not in heroic deeds, but because of that "Thing" called "Mafia", which has never been "good", which has always had the grim face of crime and crime. abuse, which has always lived in the silence (omertà, it's called) of those who are afraid or who are complicit.

the new Corleone seeks the truth, gradually replacing the non-culture of silence with the culture of the word. Making it known, then, is important.

Highly recommended destination.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corleone

Clan dei Corleonesi

The Corleonesi clan was a faction within Cosa Nostra formed in the seventies, so called because its most important leaders came from the Corleone family: Luciano Liggio, Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca Bagarella.

However, the Corleonesi should not be identified only as belonging to the Corleone family, but as a faction of mafia gangs who first supported Luciano Liggio and later Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. The Corleonese faction also included mafia representatives from other provinces, such as Nitto Santapaola from the province of Catania and Francesco Messina Denaro from the province of Trapani.

During the second mafia war, at the beginning of the eighties, the Corleonesi clan opposed the "faction of Palermo" represented, among others, by Gaetano Badalamenti, Stefano Bontate and Salvatore Inzerillo. The victory of the Corleonesi and in particular the rise of Totò Riina at the top of the organization marked a new era in the history of the Sicilian mafia, inaugurating a season of attacks against the state that culminated in the 1992-1993 massacres and which was at the origin , at the beginning of the nineties, of the so-called State-Mafia negotiation.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_dei_Corleonesi

Palermo

Palermo (Palermu in siciliano, Paliemmu in dialetto palermitano) è un comune italiano di 658 403 abitanti.

Si tratta del quinto comune più popolato d'Italia ed è al centro di un'area metropolitana di oltre un milione di abitanti.

Palermo è da molti anni una delle mete preferite dai turisti europei, negli ultimi anni abbiamo assistito ad un aumento di giovani visitatori di età compresa tra i 20 e i 30 anni. La città attira sempre più giovani, senza dubbio una città italiane più visitate durante l’estate, questo grazie alla storia millenaria della città che offre davvero molteplici percorsi culturali, artistici, culinari, naturalistici e di svago, tra relax e divertimento. Questa piccola guida vi aiuterà ad al meglio il tempo da trascorrere nel capoluogo siciliano

Meta consigliatissima.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo 

Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone, born Giovanni Salvatore Augusto Falcone (Palermo, May 18, 1939 - Palermo, May 23, 1992, was an Italian magistrate, victim of Cosa Nostra in Italy together with his wife Francesca Morvillo and the three men of the escort: Antonio Montinaro, Rocco Dicillo and Vito Schifani. Together with Paolo Borsellino, colleague and childhood friend until his death, Giovanni Falcone is one of the most important and prestigious personalities in the fight against the mafia in Italy and internationally. The body of the Italian magistrate was buried in a monumental tomb in the cemetery of Sant'Orsola in Palermo, but in June 2015 it was then moved to the Church of San Domenico, located in the Sicilian capital.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Falcone

Paolo Borsellino

Paolo Emanuele Borsellino (Palermo, January 19, 1940 - Palermo, July 19, 1992) was an Italian magistrate, victim of the Cosa Nostra massacre in via D'Amelio together with the five agents of his escort: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi (first woman to to be part of an escort and also the first woman of the State Police to fall into service, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina and Claudio Traina. Together with Giovanni Falcone, colleague and childhood friend until his death, Paolo Borsellino is considered one of the most important and prestigious personalities in the fight against the mafia in Italy and internationally.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Borsellino

The Capaci massacre

The Capaci massacre was a terrorist-mafia attack carried out by Cosa Nostra on 23 May 1992 near Capaci (on the territory of Isola delle Femmine) with a bomb made up of 500 kg of TNT, to kill the anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone. The police detonated a section of the A29 motorway at 5:57 pm, while the escort procession with the judge, his wife and police officers on board, placed in three armored Fiat Cromas, passed over it. In addition to the judge, four other people died: his wife Francesca Morvillo, also a magistrate, and the escort agents Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo and Antonio Montinaro. There were 23 injured, including officers Paolo Capuzza, Angelo Corbo, Gaspare Cervello and the judicial driver Giuseppe Costanza.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strage_di_Capaci

The nassacre in Via D’Amelio

The massacre in via D'Amelio was a terrorist-mafia attack that took place in Italy on July 19, 1992, on a Sunday, at street number 21 in via Mariano D'Amelio in Palermo, in which the Italian magistrate lost his life Paolo Borsellino and the five escort agents Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi (first woman to be part of an escort and also the first woman of the State Police to fall into service, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina and Claudio Traina. The only survivor was agent Antonino Vullo, waking up in hospital after the explosion, in serious condition (at the time of the explosion he was parking one of the escort cars)

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strage_di_via_D%27Amelio

Leonardo Sciascia

Leonardo Sciascia (Racalmuto, January 8, 1921 - Palermo, November 20, 1989) was an Italian writer, journalist, essayist, playwright, poet, politician, art critic and teacher.

Free spirit and nonconformist, very lucid and merciless critic of our time, Sciascia is one of the great figures of the Italian and European twentieth century. To the eagerness to know the contradictions of his land and of humanity, he combined a pessimistic and always disappointed sense of justice, but which never renounces the use of human reason of the Enlightenment matrix, to implement this project of his. The influence of Luigi Pirandello's cognitive relativism can instead be traced back to humor and the difficulty of reaching a conclusion that his protagonists encounter: reality is not always objectively observable, and is often an inextricable set of truth and lie. .

He also had an important political activity, attested to positions of democratic socialism and moderate Marxism.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Sciascia

Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Calogero Camilleri (Porto Empedocle, 6 September 1925 - Rome, 17 July 2019) was an Italian writer, screenwriter, director, playwright and teacher.

He has achieved popularity since the late nineties for inspiring the hugely successful television series Il commissario Montalbano broadcast on Rai 1.

He taught directing at the National Academy of Dramatic Art, and among the students he had Luca Zingaretti, who later became Commissioner Montalbano. His works (over one hundred) have been translated into at least 120 languages ​​(including English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Russian, Polish, Greek, Norwegian, Hungarian, Japanese, Hebrew and Croatian) and he has sold more than 10 million copies.

On January 26, 2003, at the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome, he received the medal of Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic from the then President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Among other honors, the honorary citizenship of Santa Fiora, in 2014, and Agrigento, also in 2014, as well as having been awarded many honorary degrees.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Camilleri

Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello (Agrigento, June 28, 1867 - Rome, December 10, 1936) was an Italian playwright, writer and poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1934. For his production, the issues addressed and the innovation of the theatrical story he is considered one of the most important playwrights of the twentieth century. Among his works stand out several short stories and short stories (in Italian and Sicilian) and about forty plays, the last of which is incomplete.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Pirandello

Peppino Impastato

Giuseppe Impastato, better known as Peppino (Cinisi, January 5, 1948 - Cinisi, May 9, 1978), was an Italian journalist, radio host and activist, member of Proletarian Democracy and known for his complaints against the activities of the Cosa Nostra, in following of which he was assassinated on May 9, 1978


https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppino_Impastato

Strage di Portella della Ginestra

The massacre of Portella della Ginestra was a massacre committed on 1 May 1947 in Portella della Ginestra, in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi in the province of Palermo, by the criminal gang of Salvatore Giuliano who fired at the crowd of peasants gathered to celebrate the workers' day, causing eleven deaths and numerous injuries.

The reasons for the massacre, which in the following days was followed by assaults on left-wing parties and labor chambers in the area, lie not only in the declared aversion of the bandit towards the communists, but also in the will of the mafia powers and of the Sicilian independence. Although the principals have never been identified, the responsibilities of Sicilian political circles interested in intimidating the peasant population who claimed the land and had voted for the People's Bloc in the elections of 1947 are certain

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strage_di_Portella_della_Ginestra

Gaetano Badalamenti

Gaetano Badalamenti, nicknamed Seated Tano (Cinisi, September 14, 1923 - Ayer, April 29, 2004), was an Italian mafioso, linked to Cosa Nostra.

He was the head of the Cinisi mafia gang in the province of Palermo and headed the "Commission" from 1974 to 1978. In 1987 he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years of imprisonment in a federal prison for having been one of the leaders of the so-called "Pizza connection ", a drug trafficking worth $ 1.65 billion that, from 1975 to 1984, used pizzerias as a distribution point. Badalamenti was also sentenced to life in prison for having ordered the murder of Giuseppe Impastato, a proletarian democracy activist who through his radio program, Radio Aut, had denounced the illegal activities of the boss.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaetano_Badalamenti

Radio Aut

Radio Aut was a free radio founded in 1977 by Peppino Impastato in Terrasini, in the province of Palermo.

The radio was based in Terrasini (and not in Cinisi as is generally reported by the media) and was receivable on the 98,800 MHz frequency in Terrasini and surroundings

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Aut

Catania

Heart of an urban agglomeration of around 700,000 residents.

Extending to the south-eastern slopes of Mount Etna, it is the center of the most densely populated metropolitan area of Sicily.

Impossible to describe it in a few lines, but we guarantee that it has all the characteristics of a city rich in tradition, culture, street food, entertainment, art, museums, a crystalline sea and in all this is dominated by the Etna volcano which, in addition to being the background he frames it in one of the best photos and determines the volcanic character of its inhabitants.

Highly recommended destination.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catania

Aci Trezza

Aci Trezza (Trizza in Sicilian) is a fraction of 4 949 inhabitants of Aci Castello, an Italian town in the metropolitan city of Catania in Sicily.

Center of ancient fishing tradition founded at the end of the seventeenth century by the nobleman Stefano Riggio from Palermo as a maritime landing place for his fief, the town overlooks the Ionian Sea in front of the small archipelago of the Cyclops Islands, a site of naturalistic and geological interest; from the second half of the twentieth century the village has also become a tourist destination. Aci Trezza is also known for being the place where the novel I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga and the film La terra trema by Luchino Visconti were set, in turn directly inspired by the work of the realist writer.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aci_Trezza

Giovanni Verga

Giovanni Carmelo Verga (Catania, 2 settembre 1840– Catania, 27 gennaio 1922) è stato uno scrittore, drammaturgo e senatore italiano, considerato il maggior esponente della corrente letteraria del Verismo.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Verga

Vincenzo Bellini

Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (Catania, November 3, 1801 - Puteaux, September 23, 1835) was an Italian composer, one of the most famous operas of the nineteenth century.

Much of what is known about Bellini's life and his activity as a musician comes from letters written to his friend Francesco Florimo, whom he met as a fellow student in Naples. Considered, on a par with Gioacchino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti, the composer par excellence of the era of Italian bel canto, in particular of the early nineteenth century, Bellini was the author of ten operas in all, of which the most famous and represented are The sleepwalker, Norma and I puritani.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenzo_Bellini

Teatro Massimo Vincenzo Bellini

Il Teatro Massimo Vincenzo Bellini è il centro di rappresentazione dell'opera di Catania.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_Massimo_Vincenzo_Bellini

Taormina 

Taormina (Taurmina or Taummina, in Sicilian) is an Italian town of 10 815 inhabitants

Taormina is located on the top of Monte Tauro, a natural terrace overlooking the sea. Its wonderful location and its naturalistic beauties make a holiday in Taormina a dream for any tourist. Everyone wants to visit Taormina, and in fact the "Pearl of the Ionian" is certainly the most famous and important tourist center in the whole of Sicily.

A must visit.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taormina

Savoca and the movie set of “Il Padrino” di Francis Ford Coppola

Savoca (Sàuca in Sicilian) is an Italian town of 1 746 inhabitants

Loved by many and known by few, Savoca, a small village in the Messina area, welcomes its visitors with one of the most famous film frames, at the entrance to the town the eighteenth-century Palazzo Trimarchi still reveals the sign of the famous Bar Vitelli where Michael Corleone The Godfather spoke with the father of his future wife Apollonia Vitelli.

Inside the Bar you can enjoy, in addition to the excellent lemon granita, a small photographic museum of the Godfather that tells the weeks of shooting and the views wisely adopted by director Francis Ford Coppola.

The town still retains many buildings that recall medieval origins and the Renaissance period, along the narrow streets of the historic center Baroque buildings alternate with rural buildings of the early twentieth century, in the sparkling air of citrus groves, in the shade of the almond tree the terraces natural offer a glimpse of the sea that caresses the coasts.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savoca

Taormina 

Taormina (Taurmina or Taummina, in Sicilian) is an Italian town of 10 815 inhabitants

Taormina is located on the top of Monte Tauro, a natural terrace overlooking the sea. Its wonderful location and its naturalistic beauties make a holiday in Taormina a dream for any tourist. Everyone wants to visit Taormina, and in fact the "Pearl of the Ionian" is certainly the most famous and important tourist center in the whole of Sicily.

Highly recommended destination.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taormina

Gorges of Alcantara

A truly enchanting area that forms space between the towns of Castiglione di Sicilia and Motta Camastra in the province of Messina.

The gorges are real canyons which, unlike what one might think, were not created by the Alcantara river, which flows through them, but originate from the cooling phenomena of ancient lava flows.

Their height even exceeds 20 meters, with a width ranging from 2 to 5 meters. They are narrow, very long and very high: really special in shape.

A perfect place for those seeking tranquility, but above all for those who love hiking and long walks. The paths that run along the Gorges, in fact, are perfect for immersing yourself in Sicilian nature, among citrus groves and other luxuriant plants.

Highly recommended destination.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gole_dell'Alcantara

Taormina 

Taormina (Taurmina or Taummina, in Sicilian) is an Italian town of 10 815 inhabitants

Taormina is located on the top of Monte Tauro, a natural terrace overlooking the sea. Its wonderful location and its naturalistic beauties make a holiday in Taormina a dream for any tourist. Everyone wants to visit Taormina, and in fact the "Pearl of the Ionian" is certainly the most famous and important tourist center in the whole of Sicily.

A must visit.

Highly recommended destination.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taormina

Tindari

Tìndari is a fraction of PattiMito, sea, archeology and ancient legends: all this is Tindari, in the province of Messina. Located on a promontory of the Nebrodi mountains in northern Sicily, it overlooks the Gulf of Patti and enjoys a breathtaking view

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tindari