History History

Sicily has been inhabited since the Palaeolithic period, as evidenced by the numerous objects and rock engravings found in the Addaura cave on Mount Pellegrino, near Palermo. During the 13th century BC, occupied by the Elymians and Sicanes, Sicily became an important stage in the Mediterranean tin trade. It was at this time that the Siculi, an Indo-European tribe, settled on the eastern coasts of the island, pushing the Elymians and Sicanes back to the western part of the island and to small towns such as Pantalica to the northwest of Syracuse. The Phoenicians, who came from the coast of present-day Syria, opened extremely active trading posts in the 10th and 9th centuries BC, before coming up against the Greeks.

The first Greek colony was established on Naxos near Taormina in 757 BC. From the 8th to the middle of the 6th century B.C., Greeks landed on the shores of Sicily, which they named Trinacria (the island of the Three Spikes). Chasing the Sicilian tribes inland and the Phoenicians to the west, where the latter created new trading posts (Motye, Palermo), the Hellenes then founded, around 730 BC, Syracuse, Zancle (today Messina), Catania, Gela, Selimonte and Akragas (today Agrigento) in 581 B.C. These colonies imported their language, their political organization, their laws, their gods, their culture and experienced agricultural prosperity. In the^5th century BC, the population was estimated at 1,300,000 inhabitants despite clashes with the Elymians, the Sicanes and the Siculi, who allied themselves with the Carthaginians to reconquer Trinacria. But the tyrant Gelon, who administered Gela and Syracuse, at the head of a powerful army, defeated the Carthaginian troops at the battle of Himera, in 480 BC. Apart from these troubled episodes, the^5th century BC was the golden age of Hellenistic Sicily, which built beautiful public monuments and religious temples. The threat of Carthaginians reappeared later, pushing the Hellenes to cede them the western part of the island. Sicily was then administered by Carthage in the west and by Syracuse in the east.

From 405 BC, one of the tyrants of Syracuse set out to conquer the still independent Greek cities and oppose the power of Carthage. Continuing the long tradition of patronage, he made his court the meeting place for artists, scholars and philosophers of his time, including Plato, who became his advisor. His death marked the beginning of a century of wars against Carthage. In 264 BC, Rome, allied with Syracuse, which remained independent, set out to conquer Carthage's Sicilian possessions: this was the first Punic War. Like their predecessors, the rulers of Syracuse continued to maintain a brilliant court of scientists and philosophers, including Archimedes. In 218 BC, Romans and Carthaginians clashed again: the second Punic War. This time Syracuse was Carthage's ally, which led to its loss. In 215 BC, the city resisted the Romans, commanded by the consul Marcellus, for almost three years. Despite the efforts of its defenders, including Archimedes, who demonstrated his genius by setting fire to the sails of the Roman galleys with large mirrors, Syracuse was defeated in 212 BC and Sicily fell into Roman hands.

The fall of Syracuse in 211 BC marked the beginning of the Roman invasion. As soon as it was conquered, Sicily fell prey to the Roman aristocracy, who built up large agricultural estates, the famous latifundia, to feed the population of Roman Italy. Sicily became its granary. Because of the inhuman exploitation of a servile workforce, the island was to experience slave revolts, including that of Eunous (from present-day Syria), and then that of Tryphon, at the head of nearly 40,000 slaves. Tryphon plundered and ravaged the Sicilian latifundia, bringing the threat of famine to Rome. But with the transition from the Republic to the Empire under Octavian, who became Augustus, Sicily is pacified and out of barbarian dangers. Between the 1st and 4th centuries, it became a holiday resort for the Roman elites. The cities are covered with rich monuments, the countryside with beautiful villas. But in the 3rd century, the weakening of the Empire led to new slave revolts that bloodied the latifundia. At the same time, Frankish sailors and Carthaginian pirates plundered and burned the fertile Syracuse in 278. In the^5th century, other barbarians, the Vandals, plundered the coasts in their turn before investing the island around 470. But the Ostrogoths, settled in continental Italy, drove them out around 490 and reigned there for 50 years.

In the 6th century, Sicily returned to the Greek tradition, whose language and culture had never completely disappeared from the island. In 535, Belisarius, at the head of a powerful Byzantine army, drove out the Ostrogoths and annexed the island, in accordance with the wishes of the Eastern Emperor Justinian. Converted to Christianity since the 4th century, the Church of Sicily was then attached to the Church of the East, not without protest on the part of the Pope, who was based in Rome. The Byzantines encountered a strong Hellenic tradition in Sicily, which favoured their establishment. Subjected regularly to attacks by pirates in the Mediterranean, the Eastern Emperor nevertheless chose Sicily to host the capital of the Empire. Indeed, between 663 and 668, under the threat of Muslim expansion, Constantinople is abandoned by the court, and the organs of the imperial administration come to settle in Syracuse, which thus revives its former glory. Against all odds, Byzantine domination was maintained in Sicily until the 820s.

Driven out of the island by the Arabs who took Palermo in 831, then Syracuse in 878, the Byzantines tried several times to retake Sicily, without success. During the Muslim occupation, the lands of Entella and Calathamet were heavily Arabized. Thanks to the tolerance that characterized Islam at the time, the regions were free to follow their own customs and traditions. The Byzantine language and culture continued to flourish, as did Christianity. Hard workers, the Muslims will participate in the economic enrichment of the island, developing its agriculture by introducing irrigation and new crops (mulberry trees, cotton, orange trees, date palms, sugar cane) and developing financial and commercial "international" places such as Mazara. They will also promote the cultural influence of the island. Palermo became the capital at the expense of Syracuse and developed enormously during this period, and many magnificent mosques and palaces were built in Arab-Byzantine style. This enrichment is at the origin of a civilization that flourished in the Iberian Peninsula between the 10th and 13th centuries, that of the Andalusians.

Heirs to Tancred of Hauteville, Robert Guiscard, known as the cunning one, and his brother Roger seized Messina in 1061, then Palermo and Syracuse. But how did they get there? At the beginning of the eleventh century, the island was in the grip of numerous wars between Muslim potentates. The Normans arrived in southern Italy and carved out large strongholds in Calabria and Puglia, before landing in Sicily. In 1091, the whole island was conquered after 30 years of battle. Sicily thus became independent for the first time since the Greeks. Despite a society divided between Greeks, Latins and Arabs, the county, then the kingdom of Sicily, was to experience unprecedented development and prosperity. The island emancipated itself from the feudal tutelage of the Normans from the mainland, notably Roger II, son of Roger I, who took his crown in 1101.

When Roger II died in 1154, his son William II (1154-1166) ascended the throne of Sicily. His reign was marked by bloody clashes. In 1160 in particular, the island was the scene of a veritable genocide targeting the Muslims. His son William III succeeded him in 1166, but in 1189, his death, without having had time to have a male heir, plunged Sicily into a long and bloody war of succession. It pitted the party of the future Frederick II Hohenstaufen, grandson through his mother of Roger II of Sicily and son of the German emperor Henry VI, against the Norman party, composed of the great feudal lords who dominated southern Italy. In 1197, after eight years of fratricidal warfare, Frederick II won Sicily, which thus lost its independence, the latter being master of the Germanic Empire. This victory marked the end of Norman Sicily, which nevertheless remained the most modern state in the West, with Frederick II continuing the work of Roger II. He ruled the Empire from Palermo, but soon had to move his capital to the mainland. His long reign (from 1197 to 1250) was marked by growing opposition to him from the papacy, with which he came into open conflict. Several times excommunicated and even deposed by the Holy See, he died in 1250, hunted down in his own lands.

Charles of Anjou, brother of Saint Louis, conquered southern Italy and then Sicily before being crowned by Pope Clement IV in 1266 to succeed Frederick II. Sicily emerged from this dynastic conflict bloodless, as the tax pressure had reached its peak under the last Hohenstaufen to finance the war. Added to this was the return of feudal practices by Charles of Anjou, who quickly became unpopular. In 1282, the violent revolt of the "Sicilian Vespers" broke out against him. Starting with a simple jostle, this insurrection ended with the massacre of nearly 2,000 Frenchmen. The whole of Sicily went into insurrection. On 30 August of the same year, Peter III, son of the King of Aragon and son-in-law of Manfred (the son of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen), was proclaimed King of Sicily. But he is a king without a kingdom. He then set about conquering his property, helped in this task by the supporters of the former Hohenstaufen still present on the island.

Acquired from the crown of Aragon, Sicily broke away in 1296. Its king, Frederick III, faced a European coalition led by the papacy and its loyal Angevin allies, who ruled over Naples. Victorious in 1302, Frederick III kept Sicily and was crowned King of Trinacria. Charles of Anjou then retained only southern Italy. The island, tired by incessant wars, plagued by the plague of 1348, was ravaged by political chaos. In 1410, it came under the Aragonese crown for the second time, as did southern Italy from 1442. With the unification of the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile to form the Kingdom of Spain, it became a Spanish possession until 1713. But this change did not bring any improvement: the decadence begun in the 14th century continued. A very fierce feudal regime led to peasant revolts in the 16th and 17th centuries, but to no avail. Subjected to very heavy taxes, to the Inquisition from 1487 and to the expulsion of the Jews, the Sicilian population could not even seek support from the Church, in charge of immense latifundiary domains and beneficiary of important privileges. In 1647, an insurrection against the high cost of living and famine in Palermo was put down in blood. In 1674, Messina rose up against heavy taxes and resisted for 4 years, helped by Louis XIV. Finally abandoned by its French allies, Messina had to surrender in 1678. A terrible repression fell on the city. From then on, Sicily sought to drive the Spanish occupier out of its territory. At the end of an interminable war of succession which opposed, between 1701 and 1714, the kingdom of France and that of Spain, the Bourbon Philippe d'Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, ascended the Spanish throne. He abandoned Sicily to Victor Amédée II of Savoy, who himself left it in 1718, in favour of Sardinia, to the Habsburg dynasty of Austria. The kingdom of Naples and Sicily were then taken over by the Austrians, who quickly became unpopular there.

Negotiations between the Habsburg Empire and Spain, as well as the self-determination of the Sicilians in 1735 in favour of Charles of Spain, led the latter to assume the title of King of the Two Sicilies. Sicilian society was sclerotic. The local nobility controlled everything: power, money, land. The peasantry is miserable and burdened with taxes, the interior is plagued by brigandage. Several reforms attempting to restore a semblance of equality were launched, but met with hostility from the nobility and the Church. It was in this context that the French Revolution took place.

In 1799, French troops invaded the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and took over its capital, Naples. King Ferdinand IV took refuge in Sicily, where the ideas of the Revolution had little impact. From Palermo, with the help of the English, he managed to take the island away from the revolutionary troops. The English were present to ward off any attack by Napoleonic troops from the mainland and, despite the hostility of the aristocracy, they set Sicily on the road to reform. They abolished feudalism and tried to reform the economy and open society to liberal ideas. They left the island in 1815, when the king of Palermo left for Naples. Once the democratic advances were annihilated, the reaction of revolutionary currents was not long in coming. In 1820, the Carbonari rose up in Palermo and controlled the city. The repression was once again terrible. From 1825 to 1859, some political and social progress was made with a softening of absolutism, supported by Mazzini and his companions who worked for the overthrow of the monarchy by force.

The famous "Springtime of the Peoples" will set the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ablaze and seal its fall in 1848. The insurgents' demands were centred on agrarian reform. Only the most important cities remained in the hands of the monarchy. It was therefore in rather favourable conditions that Garibaldi landed in Marsala on 11 May 1860, with a thousand or so fighters, while the town was controlled by rich English merchants. In less than three months, he conquered the island, flying from town to town, then crossing the Strait of Messina and setting foot on the continent. He entered Naples victorious in 1860. Joined by the King of Piedmont, he handed over the keys to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The same year, the island decided by referendum to join Italy. Once unity had been achieved, autonomous movements would nevertheless appear in the 20th century, due to the lack of interest of the central power in Sicily. In 1943, the Allies took Sicily, which emerged from the war with heavy destruction but was granted a large degree of autonomy. During this period, brigandage continued to be rampant, particularly in the centre of the island. Sicily is also, unfortunately, the battle against the mafia, against a background of attacks and settling of scores.

In 1973, the first attempts of the Parliament to act against the "octopus" began. Four years after the assassination of the anti-mafia prefect Dalla Chiesa, the first trial took place in 1986. But the "godfather of godfathers", Salvatore Riina, known as "Totò", still strutted shamelessly around Palermo, until the Sicilians began to march en masse after the massacres of judges Falcone and Borsellino (1992). The authorities began to wake up and arrested Riina in 1993. He will die in prison in 2017. His replacement Settimo Mineo, known as "Uncle Settimo," who was to be inducted in December 2018, was arrested just before with 45 others in a massive bust. But Cosa Nostra is still very much present today in Sicily, mainly in drug trafficking, racketeering and corruption of elected officials

On the political front, Sicily is still predominantly right-wing, even extreme right-wing, particularly in the provinces of Palermo, Agrigento, Messina and Catania. President of the region from 2017 to 2022, Nello Musumeci, founder of the regionalist Diventerà Bellissima party, supported by Silvio Berlusconi's populist Forza Italia and Salvini's far-right Northern League, became Minister for the Sea and the South in the new ultra-right government led by Giorgia Meloni in 2022. If the Socialist mayor of Palermo from 2012 to 2022, Leoluca Cascio, was an exception, welcoming migrants with open arms, the right regained power in Palermo with the election of Roberto Lagalla in 2022. His victory was marred by suspicions of Mafia links, due to his conspicuous absence from the ceremony commemorating the Capaci attack that killed Judge Falcone, the arrest on corruption charges of two candidates from his coalition a few days before the first round, and a surprisingly high score in districts with a strong Mafia influence. Right-wing and far-right parties now hold an ultra-majority position on the island, which is marked by tensions between Italy and Europe over the issue of migrants, particularly in relation to Lampedusa.

Considered one of Cosa Nostra's most influential godfathers, he was arrested on leaving hospital in Palermo after more than 30 years on the run.

The island regularly suffers major droughts, but the last one, in 2024, was particularly worrying. In water shortage since September 2023, Sicily was placed under a state of emergency from May 2024 until September. In addition, Sicily lives its news to the rhythm of Etna's eruptions, the latest dating from December 2018 (an eruption that was accompanied by an earthquake that injured 20 people), May and July 2019 and above all November 2020 and February 2021, then again in May 2022 and July 2024.