Montagna Longa air disaster

Italy’s deadliest plane crash

The tail fin of the ill-fated Alitalia Flight 112 after the
aircraft broke up on a ridge of Montagna Longa

Italy was in shock on this day in 1972 after an Alitalia Douglas DC-8 en route from Rome to Palermo crashed into a mountainside on its approach to the Sicilian airport.

Alitalia Flight 112, which was carrying 115 passengers and crew, was 5km (3 miles) from touching down at Palermo International Airport at around 10.24pm when it struck a 935m (1,980ft) crest of Montagna Longa, part of the Monti di Palermo range.

The aircraft slid along the ground for some distance but broke up after striking a series of rocks, spreading burning kerosene over a wide area. The wreckage ultimately covered an area of 4km (2.5 miles). Witnesses in the nearby town of Carini described seeing the aircraft on fire before it crashed.

The crash remains Italy’s deadliest accident involving a single aeroplane. Only the 2001 disaster at Milan’s second airport, Linate, when an airliner and a business jet collided on the ground, killing 114 passengers plus four people on the ground, claimed more casualties.

Montagna Longa is part of the Monti di Palermo range
outside the Sicilian capital of Palermo

Most of the passengers on board Alitalia Flight 112 were Italians, returning to Sicily from Rome to vote in the national elections. They included the film director Franco Indovina and Cestmir Vycpalek, the son of the then-coach of the Juventus football team.

By an unfortunate coincidence, the crash took place on the 26th anniversary of the very first Alitalia passenger flight in 1947.

The official inquiry into the crash blamed human error, blaming the pilots for not following the guidelines of the air traffic controllers.

However, ever since the crash a story has persisted that the aircraft crashed after a bomb exploded on board. This is based on a report from the Vice-Chief of Police in Palermo which came to light many years after the accident. The report described an explosion on board, which was blamed on a Right-wing subversive group aided by the Mafia.

This version of events was to an extent supported by the National Association of Italian Pilots (ANPAC), who doubted the possibility of a mistake by the pilots of Alitalia Flight 112 due to their long experience, but has never been officially accepted.

At the top of Montagna Longa, there is a cross in memory of the 115 victims.

Castello di Carini is an example of
Norman military architecture

Travel tip:

The town of Carini, which is situated 21km (13 miles) northwest of Palermo, is famous primarily for its Norman castle, the Castello di Carini, which was built by Sicily’s first Norman feudal lord Rodolfo Bonello, work on which began in the ninth century. Within the castle is a large courtyard and a residential structure which includes a 15th century ballroom. Carini is also home to one of Sicily’s largest shopping centres, called the Zona Industriale.

Palermo airport handles more than 5.75 million
passengers every year

Travel tip:

Palermo’s international airport is situated at Punta Raisi, just outside Carini, some 22km from the city. Established in 1985, the airport handles around 5.75 million passengers per year. The airport was given the name Falcone Borsellino Airport in memory of the two leading anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino who were murdered by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992.  Around 30 airlines fly to 16 domestic destinations from Palermo and more than 50 international destinations.

Home

Ernesto Basile - architect

Pioneer of Stile Liberty - the Italian twist on Art Nouveau

The rear facade of the Palazzo Monteciterio, which was
almost completely rebuilt by Ernesto Basile

The architect Ernesto Basile, who would become known for his imaginative fusion of ancient, medieval and modern architectural elements and as a pioneer of Art Nouveau in Italy, was born on this day in 1857 in Palermo.

His most impressive work was done in Rome, where he won a commission to rebuild almost completely the Palazzo Montecitorio, the home of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament.

Yet his most wide-ranging impact was in Sicily, where he followed in the footsteps of his father, Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, in experimenting with the Art Nouveau style.

Basile senior designed the Villa Favaloro, in Piazza Virgilio off Via Dante, and with Ernesto and others, notably Vincenzo Alagna, taking up the mantle, it was not long before entire districts of the city were dominated by Stile Liberty, the Italianate version of the Art Nouveau that took its name from the Liberty and Co store in London's Regent Street, which sold ornaments, fabric and objets d'art to a refined clientele and encouraged modern designers.

Ernesto Basile was a pioneer
of Art Nouveau style

Fine examples of Ernesto Basile’s architecture in Palermo include the Villino Florio (1899–1902) in Viale Regina Margherita, which is open to the public, the Hotel Villa Igiea (1899–1901) on the waterfront and the Casa Utveggio on Via XX Settembre.

He also completed the construction of the city’s great opera house, the Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, which had been started by his father in 1874 and was finally completed in 1897, its progress interrupted by an eight-year hiatus after a dispute over funding.  Allegations of fraud were levelled at Basile senior and he was to have been replaced with another architect until a public outcry forced his reinstatement. In the event he died soon after work restarted and the final six years were overseen by Ernesto.

Taught initially by his father, who was a professor at the University of Palermo, Ernesto graduated from the Royal School of Engineering and Architecture and soon afterwards moved to Rome.

His work on the Palazzo Montecitorio came about after he took part in a competition held by Francesco Crispi, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, to find an architect to supervise the reconstruction of the palace, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini with later input from Carlo Fontana, which had been seized by the new Italian government in 1870 but had fallen into serious disrepair.

Ernesto Basile's stylish Villino Florio is one of many
examples of Stile Liberty in the city of Palermo

Basile demolished the wings and rear of the palace so that Bernini’s facade was virtually all that remained, building a new structure dominated by four red-brick towers at the corners. Basile also added the Transatlantico, the long and impressive salon which surrounds the grand debating chamber, which is also Basile’s design.

The project, in which Basile fused the Roman classical and Baroque elements of the building with Art Nouveau, is seen as one of the most important milestones for early modernism in Italian architecture.

Basile’s other notable works in a prolific career include the building for the National Exhibition of Palermo in 1892, the Teatro Sociale in Canicattì in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, the Palazzo Bruno di Belmonte in Ispica in the province of Ragusa in the southeast of the island and the Palazzo San Giorgio in Reggio Calabria.

In 1890 he succeeded his father as a professor of architecture at the University of Palermo. He died in the city in August 1932.

The extravagant Liberty-style Antico Stabilimento Balneare
di Mondello is a reminder of the resort's golden age

Travel tip:

Two particular areas of Palermo and the surroundings are dominated by Stile Liberty buildings. One is Via Libertà and the streets running off it between Politeama and the Giardino Inglese; another is Mondello, the seaside town just outside the city created from an area of former marshland, where the promenade retains many Art Nouveau villas built for the well-to-do of Palermo around the turn of the century, some designed by Ernesto Basile. Right in the water itself, built on stilts with a bridge linking it to the promenade, is the extraordinary Antico Stabilimento Balneare di Mondello, the extravagant Stile Liberty bathing platform built by Rudolf Stualker.

Hotels in Mondello from TripAdvisor.co.uk

Ernesto Basile's father designed Palermo's impressive Teatro
Massimo before his son completed the project

Travel tip:

The Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna. It was originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, although today there is a limit of 1,350.  There are also seven tiers of boxes. Enrico Caruso sang in a performance of La Gioconda during the opening season, returning to perform in Rigoletto at the end of his career. The theatre was closed for renovation for more than 20 years but reopened in 1997. The final scenes of the third part of The Godfather Trilogy, based in Puzo's novel, were filmed there.



More reading:

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Italy's last universal genius

Ulisse Stacchini, the architect behind two major Milan landmarks

The groundbreaking designs of Paolo Soleri

Also on this day:

1788: The death in Rome of British royal pretender Charles Edward Stuart

1888: The death of Saint Don Bosco

1933: The birth of Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano

(Picture credits: Palazzo Monteciterio by Mac9; Villino Florio by GiuseppeT; Mondello Balneare by Berthold_Werner; Teatro Massimo by Bjs; all via Creative Commons)


Home

Salvatore Lima - politician

Christian Democrat MEP murdered by Mafia

Salvatore 'Salvo' Lima was the most
powerful Christian Democrat in Sicily

Salvatore Lima, a politician strongly suspected of being the Sicilian Mafia’s ‘man in Rome’ until he was shot dead near his seaside villa in 1992, was born on this day in 1928 in Palermo.

The Christian Democrat MEP, usually known as Salvo, had long been suspected of corruption, from his days as Mayor of Palermo in the 1950s and 60s to his time as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, between 1968 and 1979, when he formed a close association with Giulio Andreotti, the three-times Italian prime minister whose rise to power was helped considerably by the support Lima was able to garner for him in Sicily.

Lima's links with the Mafia were established by a magistrates’ enquiry into his death when it was concluded that he was killed on the orders of the then all-powerful Mafia boss Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina as an act of revenge following Lima’s failure through his connections in Rome to have sentences against 342 mafiosi accused in the so-called 'maxi-trial' of 1986-87 annulled or at least reduced.

He had allegedly promised his Cosa Nostra paymasters that he would see to it that a Supreme Court judge with a reputation for overturning sentences against suspected Mafia members was appointed prosecutor, but the position was handed instead to another judge.

Giulio Andreotti formed a close
alliance 

Riina ordered his murder, carried out by a gunman on a motorcycle outside Lima’s villa in Mondello, the seaside resort just outside Palermo, shortly after the verdicts were confirmed in 1992.  Later in the same year, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two most prominent magistrates in the investigations that led to the maxi-trial, were also killed on Riina’s orders.

Much of the information about Lima’s involvement with the Mafia was provided by pentiti - supergrasses - such as Tommaso Buscetta and Leonardo Messina, former mafiosi who turned state’s evidence after finding themselves disenfranchised by the ruthless purge of rival clans carried out by Riina’s Corleonesi family in the Second Mafia War of the early 1980s.

Buscetta and Messina both confirmed that Lima’s father, Vincenzo, had been a member of the Mafia.

Despite this, Salvo Lima was elected Mayor of Palermo in 1958 and again in 1965, occupying the office for a total of eight years. It was revealed later that during the construction boom in Palermo in the 50s and 60s, Lima and his fellow Christian Democrat Vito Ciancimino, who was the city’s assessor for public works, awarded hundreds of lucrative contracts to Francesco Vassallo, a builder with powerful Mafia connections.

One of them, a mafioso called Angelo La Barbera, had supported Lima’s campaign for election.

Lima's body lay covered by a sheet as
police looked for clues to his killing

It was also established that two Christian Democrat-supporting businessmen, Nino and Ignazio Salvo, to whom he awarded unusually generous terms to collect taxes on the island, were both cousins and Mafia members.  In return, they pledged their loyalty to Lima and Andreotti.

Lima’s election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1968 as a representative for Palermo came as a surprise, given that he was up against established politicians. It was of great benefit to Andreotti, who had much support in and around Rome but no national electoral base, that Lima was able through his influential contacts not only to place Andreotti-supporting candidates in the Sicily constituencies but also guarantee they would be elected, which gave Andreotti a much stronger powerbase in the Italian parliament than he had enjoyed previously.

When Andreotti became prime minister for the first time in 1972, it was not long before Lima had a position in government as Under-Secretary of the Budget.

He became the Member of the European Parliament for the Italian Islands in 1979 but the veneer of respectability that he took to the grave after he was murdered was seriously damaged in November 1992 when Buscetta testified before the Antimafia Commission about links between the Cosa Nostra, Lima and Andreotti.

Buscetta described Lima as “the politician to whom Cosa Nostra turned most often to resolve problems for the organisation whose solution lay in Rome."

Other witnesses, including another pentito, Gaspare Mutolo, confirmed that Lima had been ordered to "fix" the appeal of the maxi trial with Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation and had been killed because he was unable to do so.

According to Mutolo: "Lima was killed because he was the greatest symbol of that part of the political world which, after doing favours for Cosa Nostra in exchange for its votes, was no longer able to protect the interests of the organisation at the time of its most important trial."

Mondello's beautiful sandy beach is largely free to use and
attracts crowds of bathers in high season.

Travel tip:

Mondello, where Lima lived and was murdered, is a former fishing village about 10km (6 miles) north of Palermo that has become a popular beach resort. It has a sweeping bay enclosing turquoise water and a beach of fine sand in front of a promenade lined with beautiful villas, many built in Liberty style at the start of the 20th century as summer retreats for the wealthier residents of the city. The beach, which tends to be crowded during the summer with many stretches free of charge, also has many pastel-coloured changing cabins. The nature reserve of Capo Gallo, with its white rocks and clear water, is within walking distance of Mondello.

Palermo's magnificent cathedral has a classic Sicilian mix of
architectural influences from Europe and the Arab world.

Travel tip:

Although Palermo is widely seen by the rest of the world as a Mafia stronghold, visitors to the city would normally encounter nothing to suggest that the criminal underworld exerts any influence on daily life.  The Sicilian capital, on the northern coast of the island, is a vibrant city with a wealth of beautiful architecture bearing testament to a history of northern European and Arabian influences.  Typical is Palermo's majestic Cathedral of the Assumption of Virgin Mary, which includes Norman, Moorish, Gothic, Baroque and Neoclassical elements.

More reading:

Giulio Andreotti - Italy's great political survivor

The supergrass who put hundreds behind bars

Giovanni Falcone's crusade against the Mafia

Also on this day:

1752: The birth of 'father of the piano' Muzio Clementi

1881: The birth of socialite and muse Lusia Casati

1980: The death of car designer Giovanni Michelotti


Home

Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Greco - Mafia executioner

Notorious hitman thought to have committed at least 80 murders

Giuseppe 'Pino' Greco was one of the
Sicilian Mafia's most notorious killers

The notorious Mafia hitman Giuseppe Greco, who was convicted posthumously on 58 counts of murder but whose victims possibly ran into hundreds, was born on this day in 1952 in Ciaculli, a town on the outskirts of Palermo in Sicily.

More often known as ‘Pino’, or by his nickname Scarpuzzedda - meaning ‘little shoe’ - Greco is considered one of the most prolific killers in the history of organised crime.

The nephew of Michele Greco, who lived on an estate just outside Ciaculli and rose to be head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission - a body set up to settle disputes between rival clans - Pino Greco is generally accepted to have been responsible for 80 deaths, although some students of Cosa Nostra history believe he could have committed more than 300 killings.

Most of Greco’s victims were fellow criminals, the majority of them killed during the Second Mafia War, which began in 1978 and intensified between 1981 and 1983 with more than 1,000 homicides, as rival clans fought each other and against the state, with judges, prosecutors and politicians prominent in the fight against organised crime themselves becoming targets.

Greco, in fact, was convicted at the so-called Maxi Trial in the late 1980s of the murder of General Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, Italy’s counter-terrorism chief, who was shot to death in his car in Palermo in 1982 after being sent to Sicily with a brief to end the conflict.

General Carlo Alberto dalla was Greco's most high-profile
victim among the scores of murders he committed

In 1983, also in Palermo, he planted and detonated the car bomb that killed magistrate Rocco Chinnici, his two carabinieri escorts and the porter of the building where Chinnici lived.

As a young man, Greco was academically bright, excelling in the study of Latin and Greek, but his family background meant that his life in crime was effectively preordained. His father was also a contract killer, whose nickname Scarpa - ‘shoe’ - gave rise to Giuseppe’s nom de guerre.

The exact point at which he became part of the Mafia is not known but by 1979 he was sitting alongside his uncle, Michele, on the Commission, as the Ciaculli clans formed a powerful alliance with the Corleonesi, led by Salvatore 'Toto' Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.

It was on behalf of Riina and Provenzano, who instigated the internecine conflict that was to prove so deadly, that Pino carried out his reign of terror, working closely in particular with Filippo Marchese, a notorious Corleonesi hitman who ran the so-called Room of Death, an apartment in Palermo where victims would be taken to meet their fate.

Giuseppe Lucchese, who for a
time was Greco's partner in crime

Such was the nature of Greco’s work, however, that within days of organising with Marchese a massacre of nine gangsters invited to a barbecue at his uncle’s estate, Greco was ordered by Riina to kill Marchese, who was perceived as becoming too powerful.

Unfortunately for Greco, that fate would soon enough be his own, Riina’s craving for ultimate power brooking no sentiment. Greco's ‘mistake’ was to assume control of the Ciaculli mob on behalf of his uncle, who was in hiding.

Riina decided he had to reduce the strength of the Ciaculli, who lost eight members in a massacre in the Piazza Scaffa in central Palermo, and had decided that Greco had to go even as his erstwhile chief henchman was arranging the killing of another identified ‘enemy’ in police investigator Antonino Cassarà.

In September 1985, Greco invited two supposed friends, Vincenzo Puccio and Giuseppe Lucchese, into his villa outside Bagheria, about 20km (12 miles) east of Palermo, only for the pair to draw their weapons and shoot him dead. His body was never found and his death not confirmed until 1989 by an informant, Francesco Marino Mannoia, whose brother had also been in Greco’s house at the time of the killing.

By that time, the Maxi Trial, the extraordinary event spanning six years that saw the conviction of 360 defendants following the investigations led by Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone, had handed Greco a life sentence in absentia, along with Marchese, Riina and Provenzano among others.

The sandy beach at Mondello, the pretty resort just
along the coast from Palermo

Travel tip:

Palermo has plenty of attractions in the heart of the city, but there are also some good beaches nearby, the closest of which is at Mondello, about 10km (6 miles) out of town to the north. The former fishing village has a nice sweeping bay enclosing turquoise water and a beach of fine sand and a promenade lined with beautiful villas, many built in Liberty style at the start of the 20th century as summer retreats for the wealthier residents of the city.  The nature reserve of Capo Gallo, with its white rocks and clear water, is within walking distance of Mondello.

The Villa Palagonia in Bagheria reflected the town's
wealth in the early 18th century

Travel tip:

Bagheria, a town of around 55,000 inhabitants, became prosperous under Savoyard and Habsburg rule in the early 18th century, when the first of many grand villas were built in the town.  The two most striking baroque residences, Villa Valguarnera and Villa Palagonia, were designed by the architect Tommaso Maria Napoli and have echoes of architecture in Rome and Vienna, where he had worked previously.  Villa Palagonia is renowned for its complex external staircase, curved façades, and marble.  The town is the home of the film director Giuseppe Tornatore, most famous for Cinema Paradiso, and some of the location shooting took place there.


More reading:

How Bernardo Provenzano evaded the police for 43 years

Giovanni Falcone's lifelong crusade against the Mafia

Tommaso Buscetta, the Mafia 'pentito' who put hundreds behind bars

Also on this day:

1710: The birth of 'opera buffa' composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

1881: The birth of Gaetano Merola, founder of the San Francisco Opera

1975: The death of Carlo Levi, author of Christ Stopped at Eboli


Home

Joe Profaci - Mafia boss

Sicilian who influenced profile of Mario Puzo’s Godfather

Giuseppe 'Joe' Profaci hid his criminal empire
behind his 'front' as an olive oil importer

The Mafia boss Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Profaci, one of the real-life gangsters who influenced the author Mario Puzo as he created the character of his fictional mob boss Vito Corleone in The Godfather, was born in Villabate in Sicily on this day in 1897.

It was after studying Profaci’s crime career that he decided that Corleone, who is thought to have been based largely on one of Profaci's fellow mob bosses, Carlo Gambino, should hide his criminal activities behind his ‘legitimate’ identity as an olive oil importer, mirroring what Profaci did in real life in New York.

Profaci is believed to have started importing olive oil before he became heavily involved in crime but chose to keep the business going as one of a network of legitimate companies, so that he could mask the proceeds of his crime empire and satisfy the authorities that he was paying his taxes.

In fact, the olive oil business became a hugely lucrative concern, particularly when shortages in the Second World War enabled him to sell the product at premium prices. The irony of Profaci’s criminal life was that his legitimate companies, of which he had as many as 20, actually provided work for hundreds of New Yorkers.

Little is known about Profaci’s early life in Sicily, although he was at one time convicted on theft charges and spent perhaps a year in prison. He emigrated to the United States in 1921, undertaking a 17-day journey across the Atlantic, a month before his 24th birthday.

Vincent Mangano helped
Profaci become established

Initially he settled in Chicago, where he ran a grocery store, before moving to New York in 1925 to begin his olive oil business, based on Long Island.

Becoming involved with organised crime was always his intention, however, and in 1927 he used his relationship with Vincent Mangano, who had been on the same ship that took him from Palermo to the United States in 1921, to get a foot on the ladder. Mangano, who would go on to be head of the Gambino crime family, had arrived in New York from Sicily on the same boat as Profaci.

Although Profaci at that stage had no experience of organised crime, it is thought his family contacts in Sicily helped him become established in the New York underworld, where his extortion, bootlegging and counterfeiting rackets grew rapidly. He was recognised as one of the city’s most important crime bosses at a meeting in Cleveland in 1928, attended by Chicago mob boss Al Capone, where he was given control of crime operations in Brooklyn following the murder of Salvatore D’Aquila during the Castellammarese War.

By 1931 he was one of the most powerful figures in the New York crime scene, involved in prostitution, drug trafficking, loan sharking and illegal bookmaking. The Profaci family was one of New York’s original Five Families and Joe Profaci had a seat on the Commission, the ‘governing body’ set up by Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano to foster communication and avoid damaging wars between the different Cosa Nostra families in New York, Chicago and Buffalo.

Mobsters' cars outside the meeting in Apalachin, New York
State, where Profaci was arrested in 1957

More than once, the authorities tried to find a way to jail Profaci. He was arrested on charges of drug trafficking after 90 hollowed out Sicilian oranges containing heroin were discovered being unloaded at the docks in New York but police did not have enough evidence to link the crime directly to him.

A move to revoke his US citizenship on account of his failure to declare his jail sentence in Sicily was overturned on appeal, while a bill for $1.5 million dollars in overdue taxes simply went unpaid.

He was also arrested during the famous police swoop on the so-called 'Apalachin Conference', a national mob meeting that took place in 1957 at the farm of mobster Joseph Barbara in Apalachin, in upstate New York. Profaci was convicted with 21 others on conspiracy charges but the verdict was overturned on appeal.

Joseph Colombo eventually took over
Profaci's Brooklyn crime family

At the height of his power, in addition to houses in Brooklyn and Miami Beach, Florida, Profaci acquired a 328-acre estate near Hightstown, New Jersey, that previously belonged to President Theodore Roosevelt. The estate had its own airstrip and Profaci added a chapel with an altar that was a copy of one in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

A devout Catholic, Profaci made generous cash donations to Catholic charities but it was his rather less generous treatment of family employees that ultimately led to his downfall.

One practice that provoked discontent among his criminal employees was his insistence that they should each pay him a monthly tithe, in line with an old Sicilian gang custom. The money generated by this practice was meant to support the families of jailed gang members, but Profaci pocketed much of the cash himself.

Ultimately, a Profaci bookmaker, Frank Abbatemarco, refused to pay, standing his ground despite numerous threats. Profaci eventually ordered him dead. He asked Joe Gallo, a family member, to carry out the killing, promising that he could take over Abbatemarco’s rackets as a reward, but then reneged on the deal.

It sparked an all-out conflict, in which there were several kidnappings and murders, known as the Profaci-Gallo war. Rival bosses Gambino and Tommy Lucchese pleaded with Profaci to end the war, which was not good for business, but Profaci trusted neither and refused.

The fighting ended only when Profaci, by then in the later stages of liver cancer, died in hospital in 1962. His brother-in-law and closest ally, Joseph Magliocco, assumed control of Profaci’s empire but the Commision decided to remove him, installing Joseph Colombo as Brooklyn boss, after which the Profaci family became the Colombo family.

The town of Villabate, which overlooks the Gulf of Palermo 

Travel tip:

The town of Villabate, which can be found about 10km (6 miles) southeast of Palermo, takes its name from the abbot of Santo Spirito di Palermo, Giovanni de Osca, who had a tower built there in the late 15th century, together with some houses and other buildings. Villabate used to be an agricultural town but in the 1960s the local economy suffered a huge blow as many hectares of orange trees were removed to make way for new houses, to provide permanent accommodation people still homeless after their original houses had been flattened by Allied bombers in the Second World War.

The Teatro Massimo in Palermo became a symbol of the
city's fight back against the Mafia

Travel tip:

Palermo’s Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, opened in 1897, has become a symbol of the city’s fight back against the grip of the Mafia. The largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna, originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, it was closed for supposedly minor refurbishments in 1974. But at a time when local government was at its most corrupt and when the Mafia controlled almost everything in the city there was little money in the public purse and the theatre, which once attracted all the great stars from the opera world, would remain dark for 23 years.

More reading:

Was Carlo Gambino the mobster who inspired The Godfather?

How Charles 'Lucky' Luciano brought order among warring crime gangs

The Castellammarese War and the emergence of the Five Families

Also on this day:

1538: The birth of Catholic reformer Saint Charles Borromeo

1950: The birth of corruption-busting magistrate Antonio di Pietro


Home

Palermo falls to the Allies

Capture of Sicilian capital triggered ousting of Mussolini

The American forces were welcomed as liberators by
many ordinary Sicilian citizens

One of the most significant developments of the Second World War in Italy occurred on this day in 1943 when Allied forces captured the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

A battle took place between General George S Patton’s Seventh Army and some German and Italian divisions but it was not a prolonged affair.  The Sicilians themselves by then had little appetite to fight in a losing cause on behalf of the Germans and the invading soldiers were greeted by many citizens as liberators.

It was not a decisive victory for the Allies but it had a symbolic value, signifying the fall of Sicily only 12 days after Allied forces had crossed the Mediterranean from bases in North Africa and landed at Pachina and Gela on the south coast of the island.

In fact, the Americans and the British were still meeting German resistance around Catania and Messina in the northeastern corner of the island, it would be only a matter of time before their resistance ceased.

An American officer celebrates the capture of Palermo

When news reached Rome that Palermo had fallen, the Fascist Grand Council, who had for some time given only uneasy support to Mussolini, knew that something had to be done to limit the damage of what now looked like an inevitable defeat for the Axis powers in Italy.

After a series of disasters sustained by the Axis in Africa, many of the Italian leaders were desperately anxious to make peace with the Allies and the invasion of Sicily, representing an immediate threat to the Italian mainland, was the development that prompted them to action.

Two days after the fall of Palermo, after Mussolini had told the Grand Council that Hitler was thinking of withdrawing German forces from the south of Italy, a motion calling for Mussolini’s removal from power was passed.

How the New York Times reported the fall of Palermo

On July 25, the king, Victor Emmanuel III, told Mussolini that he was to be replaced as prime minister by General Pietro Badoglio, the former chief of staff of the Italian army. After he left their meeting, Mussolini was arrested.

Although there was still a large presence of German army personnel in Italy and undoubtedly many undercover agents, secret meetings between Italian officials and the Allied commanders were already taking place with a view to agreeing an armistice, which would be signed as early as September 3.

A few days after Mussolini was ousted, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the German commander in chief in Italy, decided that the Axis troops in Sicily must be evacuated. Under the cover of rearguard actions in the area of Mount Etna, 40,000 Germans and 60,000 Italian troops were safely withdrawn across the Strait of Messina to the mainland.

The Allies entered Messina on August 16, at which point the conquest of Sicily was complete. Of approximately 190,000 Italian casualties during the invasion, 4,678 killed were confirmed as killed with 36,072 missing, 32,500 wounded and 116,681 captured.

The spectacular interior of Monreale Cathedral

Travel tip:

One of the places from which the Allies chose to launch their assault on Palermo was Monreale, an historic hill town famous for the fine mosaics in the town's great Norman cathedral. Dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, the cathedral is often spoken of as the island's greatest Norman building. It dates back to the 12th century, when the Norman ruler, William II, founded a Benedictine monastery. The church became something of a national monument for Sicily.

The waterfront at Messina in northeast Sicily

Travel tip:

Messina, which was the last part of Sicily to come under Allied control, is a city in the northeast of the island, separated from mainland Italy by the Strait of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island and is home to a large Greek-speaking community. The 12th century cathedral in Messina has a bell tower which houses one of the largest astronomical clocks in the world, built in 1933.

More reading:

Germans free captive Mussolini in daring mountain raid

How the Italian Social Republic was Mussolini's last stand

The day Mussolini took Italy into the Second World War

Also on this day:

1559: The birth of St Lawrence of Brindisi

2001: The death of Indro Montanelli, hailed as one of the greatest Italian journalists of the 20th century

Home

Tommaso Buscetta - Mafia ‘pentito’

Sicilian gangster’s testimony put hundreds behind bars

Buscetta's testimony led to hundreds
of Mafia-related arrests

The Sicilian mobster Tommaso Buscetta, who was the first major Mafia figure to break the code of omertà and pass details of organised criminal activity to the authorities, was born on this day in 1928 in Palermo.

His evidence to the celebrated anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone paved the way for the so-called Maxi Trial, a process lasting six years that led to the conviction and jailing of 350 mafiosi.

Buscetta’s testimony in the Pizza Connection Trial in New York State at around the same time in the mid-1980s led to the conviction of several hundred more mobsters both in Italy and the United States, including the powerful Sicilian Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti.

Arguably the most shocking information he passed on to the authorities concerned Italy’s three-times former prime minister, the late Giulio Andreotti, whose links with the Cosa Nostra he exposed shortly after Falcone was murdered in May 1992, killed by a massive bomb placed under the motorway linking Palermo with the city’s international airport.

Buscetta arriving at the court in
Palermo during the Maxi Trial

Andreotti was found guilty of complicity in the Mafia assassination of a journalist and sentenced to 24 years in jail, although he never went to prison and was acquitted after a number of appeals. His links with the Mafia were considered proven, although by the time that verdict was reached too much time had elapsed under Italian law and the judgment was cancelled.

The route to Buscetta becoming the Mafia’s first ‘pentito’ began in Palermo, where he was the youngest of 17 children fathered by a poorly-paid worker in a glass factory.

He followed the usual route out of poverty by becoming involved with crime. He was only 17 when he joined the mob in 1945. In the years that followed he became a fully-fledged member of the Porta Nuova Family, mainly working in cigarette smuggling.

Buscetta was part of the
Mafia from a young age

In 1963 Buscetta fled to the United States, shortly after the Ciaculli Massacre, which was part of an internal Mafia conflict known as the First Mafia War. His connections enabled him to join the Gambino crime family in New York, who gave him a front of legitimacy in a pizza business. In 1968, he was convicted in his absence of double murder by an Italian court.

Two years later he was arrested by police in New York who were aware of his conviction but released after Italian authorities failed to request his extradition.  After his later arrest in Brazil, however, he was returned to Italy and began his life sentence.

Eight years later, on day release from prison, he escaped and went back to Brazil, desperate to escape the so-called Second Mafia War, fearing for his life after several of his allies and family members had been eliminated by the ruthless boss, Toto Riina, including his close associate and friend, Stefano Bontade. It was Riina who arranged the murder of Falcone, as well as that of his fellow magistrate, Paolo Borsellino.

When Buscetta was arrested and sent back to Italy again he was so fearful of Riina that he attempted to kill himself in prison before deciding he would seek revenge on Riina by other means. He asked to talk to Falcone, and began his life as an informant - a ‘pentito’.

The judge Giovanni Falcone, to whom
Buscetta disclosed his secrets

The irony was that Buscetta was never more than a footsoldier in the Mafia hierarchy, yet always seemed to have a glamorous girlfriend and dressed as if he was wealthy. He became well connected both in Sicily and the United States.

He was therefore able to provide information about the structure, the recruitment techniques and the functions of the Cosa Nostra, providing the authorities with an understanding of the Mafia phenomenon about which they could previously only speculate.

He was the first to reveal the existence and the inner workings of the Cupola - the Mafia commission that governed the organisation and ordered the elimination of its erring members.

Buscetta’s reward was to be given special police protection, a generous income and a new identity in the United States, where he died in 2000 at the age of 71.

There are now several hundred Mafia turncoats helping Italian justice to fight organised crime.

Palermo's imposing monumental
arch at Porta Nuova

Travel tip:

One might imagine that an area that lends its name to a Mafia family to be poor and down at heel but the Porta Nuova is anything but. A giant monumental arch built in the 15th century and rebuilt in the 16th century, it opens into what was the Cassaro, the city’s most ancient street, which runs from the Norman Palace next to the Villa Bonanno park in a straight course right down to the harbour. The street has been renamed Via Vittorio Emanuele but many local people still refer to it as Cassaro.

The magnificent Teatro Massimo is seen as a symbol of
Palermo's rebellion against the grip of the Mafia

Travel tip:

Palermo’s Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, opened in 1897, has become a symbol of the city’s fight back against the grip of the Mafia. The largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna, originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, it was closed for supposedly minor refurbishments in 1974. But at a time when local government was at its most corrupt and when the Mafia controlled almost everything in the city there was little money in the public purse and the theatre, which once attracted all the great stars from the opera world, would remain dark for 23 years. However, after the Falcone murder, the city turned against the mob as never before and the reopening in 1997, with a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the esteemed maestro Claudio Abbado, was seen as a motif for Palermo’s rebirth. 

More reading:

The anti-Mafia crusade of Giovanni Falcone

Stefano Bontade - Mafia boss with close ties to ex-PM Giulio Andreotti

How Carlo Gambino became one of the world's most powerful crime bosses

Also on this day:

1478: The birth of Giulio d'Este di Ferrara, nobleman who spent half his life in jail

1814: The founding of the Carabinieri military police force

Home

Calogero Vizzini - Mafia chieftain

‘Man of Honour’ installed as Mayor by Allies

Calogero Vizzini used his power to solve
problems and settle disputes

The Sicilian Mafia boss Calogero Vizzini, known as Don Calò, died on this day in 1954 in Villalba, a small town in the centre of the island about 100km (62 miles) southeast of the capital, Palermo.

He was 76 and had been in declining health. He was in an ambulance that was taking him home from a clinic in Palermo and was just entering the town when he passed away.

His funeral was attended by thousands of peasants dressed in black and a number of politicians as well as priests played active roles in the service. One of his pallbearers was Don Francesco Paolo Bontade, a powerful mafioso from Palermo.

Although he had a criminal past, Don Calò acquired the reputation as an old-fashioned ‘man of honour’, whose position became that of community leader, a man to whom people looked to settle disputes and to maintain order and peace through his power.

In rural Sicily, such figures commanded much greater respect than politicians or policemen, many of whom were corrupt.

In his own words, in a newspaper interview in 1949, his view of the world was that “in every society there has to be a category of people who straighten things out when situations get complicated.

Like many traditional Mafia figures,
Vizzini dressed like a peasant

“Usually they are functionaries of the state. Where the state is not present, or where it does not have sufficient force, this is done by private individuals."

His position in this regard was legitimised after the Second World War when the US military government of the occupied territories was looking to ensure the defeated Fascists did not retain any vestige of power on the island.

The Americans wanted positions in a restructured local government on the island to be given to known opponents of Fascism.

Vizzini had once supported Mussolini and had even attended a dinner with the future dictator in Milan in 1922 but turned against him when the Fascists sent Cesare Mori, the so-called Iron Prefect, to Sicily on a mission to destroy the Mafia.

He, and other mafiosi, who would have been almost wiped out but for the Allied invasion, had joined the movement for an independent Sicily and were therefore seen as fitting the bill by the Americans, who installed Vizzini as Mayor of his home town.

For many years, the story has been told that Mafia figures were handed key political positions in return for facilitating the Allied landings but many historians dismiss this as a myth.

A scene from Vizzini's funeral in July 1954

A much more likely scenario is that the Mafia were seen as an important block not only on any  resurgence in Fascism but against the growing support on the mainland for communism.  Where the Mafia leaders had rebelled against Fascism, they were never likely to support the Italian Communists.

Whatever the truth,  Don Calò had moved from a life of crime - his ‘charge sheet’ included scores of murders, attempted murders, robberies, thefts and extortions - to one in which local people revered him as a bastion of law and order and a protector of his community.

He had run protection rackets, smuggled livestock, controlled flour mills and sulphur mining, ‘acquired’ considerable land from aristocratic absentee landlords, and operated a huge black market business during the Second World War selling goods stolen from warehouses and army bases.

Yet after his death a notice was pinned on the door of the church where his funeral mass would take place. It read: "Humble with the humble. Great with the great. He showed with words and deeds that his Mafia was not criminal. It stood for respect for the law, defence of all rights, greatness of character: it was love."

The Chiesa Madre di San Giuseppe on the main square
in Vizzini's home town of Villalba

Travel tip:

Villalba is a town with a population of a little less than 2,000 in the province of Caltanissetta, about 51km (32 miles) northwest of the town of the same name and 68km (42 miles) inland from Agrigento.  The name of the village has has Spanish origins, meaning "the white city" because of town's white houses. Villalba is known for the production of cereals, grapes, vegetables, tomatoes, and lentils. The Sagra del Pomodoro (tomato festival) is held in August each year.  Important churches include the Chiesa Madre, built in 1700, and the Chiesa della Concezione, erected in 1795, preserving a statue by artist Filippo Quattrocchi.

The Greek Temple of Concordia is one of the attractions in
the Valley of the Temples outside Agrigento

Travel tip:

Agrigento, a city of 55,000 inhabitants on the southern coast of Sicily, is built on the site of an ancient Greek city. It is regularly visited by tourists, largely for the ruins of the Greek city Akragas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site generally known as the Valley of the Temples and, at 1,300 hectares, the largest archaeological site in the world.  The site features a series of temples, the most impressive of which is the Temple of Concordia, one of the largest and best preserved Doric temples in the world, with 13 rows of six columns, each 6m (20ft) high, still virtually intact.

More reading:

Cesare Mori - Mussolini's fabled Mafia buster

How Charles 'Lucky' Luciano played a part in the Allied invasion of Sicily

Politics, the Mafia and a Labour Day massacre

Also on this day:

138AD - The death of the Roman emperor Hadrian

1897: The birth of former NATO secretary-general Manlio Brosio

Home

Corrado Gaipa – actor

From The Godfather to voice of Alec Guinness

Corrado Gaipa was a talented character actor who
appeared in more than 30 movies

The respected character actor and voice-dubber Corrado Gaipa was born on this day in 1925 in Palermo.

His versatility as a voice actor brought him considerable work at a time when Italian cinema audiences much preferred to watch dubbed versions of mainstream English-language films rather than hear the original soundtrack with subtitles.

Gaipa’s voice replaced that of Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars trilogy.  He was also heard dubbing Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Burt Lancaster in The Leopard, Telly Savalas in The Dirty Dozen and Lee J Cobb in The Exorcist.

He was the voice of a number of characters in animation films also, including Bagheera in Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book and Scat-Cat in The Aristocats.

As an actor in his own right, he worked with many leading directors in Italian cinema, including Francesco Rosi and Vittorio Gassman.

His most famous role was probably that of Don Tommasino in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

In Mario Puzo’s story, Don Tommasino was an old friend in Sicily of the movie’s main character, Vito Corleone, who sold olive oil to restaurants and stores in New York on behalf of Tommasino.

Gaipa played Don Tommasino in
the original Godfather movie

In return, Corleone calls on Tommasino for help in eliminating the local Mafia chief, Don Ciccio, who he believes was complicit in the murder of his parents.  Gaipa was partially disabled, needing to walk with a stick and sometimes using a wheelchair. As it happens, his character, Tommasino, is crippled by a shotgun blast from one of Ciccio’s bodyguards.

Later in the story, Vito Corleone calls on Tommasino, who replaces Ciccio as the local Mafia capo, to look after his son, Michael Corleone, during a period in which takes refuge in Sicily after committing two murders in New York.

Before embarking on his career, Gaipa was a student at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome, founded by the writer and critic Silvio D’Amico, and named after him following his death.

He made his stage debut in 1948 and for several years was an important actor in radio productions before moving into television.

After appearing on the small screen for the first time in a comedy called La rosa bianca  (The White Rose), he became a regular in TV drama series, including the 1973 hit Napoleon on Sant’Elena, in which he portrayed the English prime minister Lord Liverpool.

Although he struggled with his health over a long period, his death in 1989 at the age of 64 came rather suddenly, denying cinemagoers the chance to see him return to the role of Don Tommasino in The Godfather Part III, for which he was preparing at the time of his death.

Rome's Parioli district is an upmarket residential area

Travel tip:

The Silvio D’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art can be found in Via Vincenzo Bellini where it meets Via Guido d’Arezzo in the Parioli district of Rome, between the Villa Borghese gardens and the vast Parco di Villa Ada. The academy, which has trained many leading Italian actors, now has university status.  Parioli is regarded as Rome’s most elegant residential area.

Rome hotels by Booking.com

Palermo's Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy

Travel tip:

Palermo, Gaipa’s home city, is blessed with a number of notable theatres, including the magnificent Teatro Massimo – the largest opera house in Italy – as well as Teatro Politeama, Teatro Biondo, Teatro di Verdura, Teatro Garibaldi and Teatro Santa Cecilia.  The city also boasts a number of theatres devoted to the Sicilian tradition of puppet theatre.

Also on this day:

1955: The birth of footballer and coach Bruno Conti

1960: The birth of rock star Luciano Ligabue

1980: The birth of dancer Flavia Cacace, formerly of Strictly fame

Home