page_title: Palermo
section_title: Italian unification and today
hierarchical_section_title: Palermo / History / Italian unification and today
caption_attribution_description: Palermo
context_page_description: Palermo is a city of southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old. Palermo is in the northwest of the island of Sicily, by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
  The city was founded in 734 BC by the Phoenicians as Ziz. Palermo then became a possession of Carthage. Two Greek colonies were established, known collectively as Panormos or "All-Port"; the Carthaginians used this name on their coins after the 5th century BC. As Panormus, the town became part of the Roman Republic and Empire for over a thousand years. From 831 to 1072 the city was under Arab rule during the Emirate of Sicily when the city first became a capital. The Arabs shifted the Greek name into Balarm, the root for Palermo's present-day name. Following the Norman reconquest, Palermo became the capital of a new kingdom, the Kingdom of Sicily and the capital of the Holy Roman Empire under Emperor Frederick II and King Conrad IV.
context_section_description: The majority of Sicilians preferred independence to the Savoy kingdom; in 1866, Palermo became the seat of a week-long popular rebellion, which was finally crushed after Martial law was declared. The Italian government blamed anarchists and the Church, specifically the Archbishop of Palermo, for the rebellion and began enacting anti-Sicilian and anti-clerical policies. A new cultural, economic and industrial growth was spurred by several families, like the Florio, the Ducrot, the Rutelli, the Sandron, the Whitaker, the Utveggio, and others. In the early twentieth century, Palermo expanded outside the old city walls, mostly to the north along the new boulevards Via Roma, Via Dante, Via Notarbartolo, and Viale della Libertà. These roads would soon boast a huge number of villas in the Art Nouveau style. Many of these were designed by the architect Ernesto Basile. The Grand Hotel Villa Igiea, designed by Ernesto Basile for the Florio family, is a good example of Palermitan Art Nouveau. The huge Teatro Massimo was designed in the same period by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, Ernesto's father, and built by the Rutelli & Machì building firm of the industrial and old Rutelli Italian family in Palermo, and was opened in 1897.
  During the Second World War, Palermo was heavily bombed by the Allied air forces in 1942 and 1943, until its capture during the Allied invasion of Sicily on 22 July 1943. The harbour (main objective of the air attacks) and the surrounding quarters were effectively destroyed, as was a considerable part of the city, with heavy civilian casualties.  When American troops entered Palermo in 1943 they were greeted with "a thunderous welcome by what seemed the entire population demonstrating their feelings about Facsist rule."   The two captured Italian generals claimed that they were happy because in their view "the Sicilians were not human beings but animals". Anti-sicilian prejudice was part of the fascist regime's world view, being promoted by pro-fascist newspapers, particularly in the north of Italy.
  In 1946 the city was declared the seat of the Regional Parliament, as capital of a Special Status Region (1947) whose seat is in the Palazzo dei Normanni.
  A theme in the city's modern age has been the struggle against the Mafia, Red Brigades and outlaws such as Salvatore Giuliano, who controlled the neighbouring area of Montelepre. The Italian state effectively has had to share control of the territory, economically and administratively, with the Mafia.
  The so-called "Sack of Palermo" was one of the dramatic consequences of this problem. The term is used to indicate the speculative building practices that resulted in the destruction of a great number of historical buildings and green areas, filling the city with poor buildings, mainly between the 1950s and the 1980s. The reduced importance of agriculture in the Sicilian economy has led to a massive migration to the cities, especially Palermo, which swelled in size, leading to rapid expansion towards the north. The regulatory plans for expansion was largely ignored in the boom. New parts of town appeared almost out of nowhere, but without parks, schools, public buildings, proper roads and the other amenities that characterise a modern city.
  The Cosa Nostra has traditionally been the most powerful group in Palermo. A CNN article in July 2019 indicated that Sicilian Mafia activity in Palermo was particularly notorious in one area: the town of Passo Rigano. "According to Italian police, the mafia not only engages in extortion there, but also has a large role in the town's legal economy -- with its involvement in business such as wholesale food supplies, online betting and gambling." The police investigation at the time also confirmed strong links between the Palermo area mafia and American organized crime,  particularly the Gambino crime family. According to La Repubblica, "Off they go, through the streets of Passo di Rigano, Boccadifalco, Torretta and at the same time, Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey. Because from Sicily to the US, the old mafia has returned".
caption: The historic Grand Hotel et des Palmes
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