Sicily (Sicilia in Italian) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 25,7700 sq. km and 5 million inhabitants.

Towns and cities

Sicily's principal cities include the regional capital Palermo, together with the other provincial capitals Catania, Messina, Syracuse, Trapani, Enna, Caltanisetta, Agrigento, Ragusa. Other famous Sicilian towns include Cefalù, Taormina, Bronte, Marsala, Corleone, etc... The regional flag is divided diagonally yellow over red, with the trinacria symbol in the center.

The volcano "Etna" is situated close to Catania. The Aeolian islands to the north are administratively a part of Sicily, as are  the Egadi Islands to the west, Ustica Island to the north-west and the Pelagian Islands to the south -west.

Sicliy has been noted for two millennia as a grain-producing territory: olives and wine are among its other agricultural products. The mines of the Caltanisetta district became a leading sulphur-producig area, but have declined since 1950s.

Transport.

Vehicles.

Sicily is connected to the Italian peninsula by the national railway company, "Trenitalia", though trains are loaded onto ferries for the crossing from the mainland.

Air.  

Sicily is served by the national and international flights (mainly European) from to Palermo International Airport and Catania-Fontanarossa Airport. There are also minor national airports in Trapani and the smaller islands of Pantelleria and Lampedusa.

Arts.

Sicily is well known as a country of art: many poets and writers were born on this island. The most famous are L. Pirandello, G. Verga, S. Quasimodo, G. Bufalino and the dialectal poet I. Buttita. Other Sicilan artists include V. Bellini, R. Guttuso, etc...

Noto and Ragusa contain some of Italy's best example of Baroque architecture, carved in the local red sandstone. Caltagirone is reknowed for its decorative ceramics. Palermo is also a major center of Italian opera. Its "Teatro Massimo" is the largest opera house in Italy and the third largest in the world, seating 1400.

Sicily is also home to two prominent folk art traditions, both of which draw heavily on the islands' Norman influence. Donkey cards are painted with intricate decorations of scenes from the Norma romantic poems, such as "The Song of Roland". The same tales are told in traditional puppet theatres which feature hand-made wooden marionettes.

Guttuso and his works.

History.

Autochthonous peoples of Sicily: were tribes known to Greek writers as the Elymians, the Sicani and the Siceli.

Sicily was colonized by Phoenicians and Punic settlers from Carthage and by Greeks (8th c. B.C.). The most important colony was established at Syracuse in 734 B.C. Other important Greek colonies were Gela, Acragas, Selinunte Himera, and Messene. These city states were an important part of classical Greek civilization, which included Sicily as a part of Magna Grecia-both Empedocle and Archimedes were from Sicily. Sicilians politics was intertwined with politics in Greece itself, leading Athens, for example, mount the disastrous Sicilian Expedition during the Peloponnesian War.

The Greeks came into conflict with the Punic trading communities with ties to Carthage , which was on African mainland not far from the southwest corner of the island, and had its own colonies on Sicily. Palermo was a Carthaginian city, founded in the 8th c. B.C., named Zis or Sis ("Panormos" to the Greeks). Hundreds of Phoenician and Carthaginian grave sites have been found in necropoli over a large area of Palermo, now built over, south of the Norman palace, where the Norman kings had a vast park. In the far west, Lilybaeum (now Marsala) never was thoroughly Hellenized. In the First and Second Wars, Carthage was in control of all but the eastern part of Sicily, which was domined by Syracuse.

In the third century BC the Messanan Crisis motivated the intervention of the Roman Republic into Sicilian affairs, and led to the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage . By the end of war (242 B.C.) all Sicily was in Roman hands: for 6 centuries.

AD 440: Sicily fell to the Vandal king Genseric; a few decades later it came into Ostrogothic hands, where it remained until was conquered by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 535.

AD 827-965: Arab conquest: the cultural diversity and religious tolerance of the period of Muslim rule continue under the Normans who conquered the island in 1060-1090 (raising   its status to that of a kingdom in 1130), and the south German Hohenstaufen dynasty which ruled from 1194, adopting Palermo as its principal seat from 1220.

Conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy led in 1226 to Sicily conquest by Charles I , duke of Anjou: opposition to French officialdom and taxation led in 1282 to insurrection (the Sicilian Vespers) and successful invasion by king Peter III d'Aragón.

Ruled from 1479 by kings of Spain , Sicily suffered a ferocious outbreak of plague (1656), followed by a damaging earthquake in the east of the island (1693). Periods of rule by the crown of Savoy (1713-20) and the Austrian Habsburgs gave way to union (1734) with the Bourbon ruled kingdom of Naples as the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

1820-1848: revolutionary movements against Bourbon denial of constitutional government, Sicily was joined with the kingdom of Italy in 1860 following the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1894 labour agitation through the radical Fasci dei Lavoratori led to the imposition of martial law.

I and II w. war until 1945.

Sicily today.

Despite some economic development in the half-century after Italian unification, Sicily was largely bypassed by the industrial growth which transformed the larger urban areas of northern Italy.

Sicily has been an autonomous region since 1946.