When did Sicily join Italy?
Kingdom of Sardinia
On 17 March 1861, law no. 4671 of the Sardinian Parliament proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy, so ratifying the annexations of all other Apennine states, plus Sicily, to the Kingdom of Sardinia. The institutions and laws of the Kingdom were quickly extended to all of Italy, abolishing the administrations of the other regions. Piedmont became the most dominant and wealthiest region in Italy and the capital of Piedmont, Turin, remained the Italian capital until 1865, when the capital was moved to Florence. But many revolts exploded throughout the peninsula, especially in southern Italy, and on the island of Sicily, because of the perceived unfair treatment of the south by the Piedmontese ruling class. The House of Savoy ruled Italy until 1946 when Italy was declared a republic by referendum. In this referendum the southern regions, including Sardinia, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the House of Savoy, with the results being 63.8% in favor of maintaining the monarchy.
Norman conquest of southern Italy
Although the conquest of Sicily was primarily military, Robert and Roger also signed treaties with the Muslims to obtain land. Hindered by Sicily's hilly terrain and a relatively small army, the brothers sought influential, worn-down Muslim leaders to sign the treaties (offering peace and protection for land and titles). Because Sicily was conquered by a unified command, Roger's authority was not challenged by other conquerors and he maintained power over his Greek, Arab, Lombard and Norman subjects. Latin Christianity was introduced to the island, and its ecclesiastical organisation was overseen by Roger with papal approval. Sees were established at Palermo (with metropolitan authority), Syracuse and Agrigento. After its elevation to a Kingdom of Sicily in 1130, Sicily became the centre of Norman power with Palermo as capital. The Kingdom was created on Christmas Day, 1130, by Roger II of Sicily, with the agreement of Pope Innocent II, who united the lands Roger had inherited from his father Roger I of Sicily.
These areas included the Maltese Archipelago, which was conquered from the Arabs of the Emirates of Sicily; the Duchy of Apulia and the County of Sicily, which had belonged to his cousin William II, Duke of Apulia, until William's death in 1127; and the other Norman vassals.
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
In 1501, King Ferdinand II of Aragon, son of John II, conquered Naples and reunified the two kingdoms under the authority of the newly united Spanish throne. The Kings of Spain then bore the title "King of Both Sicilies" or "King of Sicily and of the Two Coasts of the Strait" until the War of the Spanish Succession. At the end of that war, the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 granted Sicily to the Duke of Savoy until the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714 left Naples to the Emperor Charles VI. In 1720 the Emperor and Savoy exchanged Sicily for Sardinia, thus reuniting Naples and Sicily.
List of monarchs of Sicily
Peter III of Aragon, Manfred's son in law, of the House of Barcelona, conquered the island of Sicily from Charles I in 1282 and had himself crowned King of Sicily. Thereafter the old Kingdom of Sicily was centred on the mainland, with capital at Naples, and although informally called Kingdom of Naples it was still known formally as "Kingdom of Sicily". Thus, there were two "Sicilies" — the island kingdom, however, was often called "Sicily beyond the Lighthouse" or "Trinacria", by terms of a treaty between the two states.
Sicily
Traditionally, Sicily gives centre-right results during election. From 1943 to 1951 there was also a separatist political party called Sicilian Independence Movement ("Movimento Indipendentista Siciliano", MIS). Its best electoral result was in the 1946 general election, when MIS obtained 0.7% of national votes (8.8% of votes in Sicily), and four seats. However, the movement lost all its seats following the 1948 general election and the 1951 regional election. Even though it has never been formally disbanded, today the movement is no longer part of the politics of Sicily. After World War II Sicily became a stronghold of the Christian Democracy, in opposition to the Italian Communist Party. The Communists and their successors (the Democratic Party of the Left, the Democrats of the Left and the present-day Democratic Party) had never won in the region until 2012. Sicily is now governed by a centre-right coalition. Nello Musumeci is the current President since 2017.
Kingdom of Italy
By 1943, Italy was failing on every front, by January of the year, half of the Italian forces serving on the Eastern Front had been destroyed, the African campaign had collapsed, the Balkans remained unstable and demoralised Italians wanted an end to the war. King Victor Emmanuel III urged Count Ciano to overstep Mussolini to try to begin talks with the Allies. In mid-1943, the Allies commenced an invasion of Sicily in an effort to knock Italy out of the war and establish a foothold in Europe. Allied troops landed in Sicily with little initial opposition from Italian forces. The situation changed as the Allies ran into German forces, who held out for some time before Sicily was taken over by the Allies. The invasion made Mussolini dependent on the German Armed Forces ("Wehrmacht") to protect his regime. The Allies steadily advanced through Italy with little opposition from demoralized Italian soldiers, while facing serious opposition from German forces.
Allied invasion of Sicily
The Allied invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, was a major campaign of World War II, in which the Allies took the island of Sicily from the Axis powers ( the Kingdom of Italy and Nazi Germany). It began with a large amphibious and airborne operation, followed by a six-week land campaign, and initiated the Italian Campaign.
History of Palermo
This famous general entered Palermo with his troops (the “Thousands”) on May 27, 1860. After the plebiscite later that year Palermo and the whole of Sicily became part of the new Kingdom of Italy (1861).
Nobility of Italy
Modern Italy became a nation-state during the Risorgimento on 17 March 1861, when most of the states of the peninsula and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were united under King Victor Emmanuel II of the Savoy dynasty, hitherto monarch of the Kingdom of Sardinia, a realm that included Piedmont. The architect of Italian unification was Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel. Rome itself remained for a further decade under the Papacy, and became part of the Kingdom of Italy only in 1870. In September of that year, invading Italian troops entered the city, and the ensuing occupation forced Pope Pius IX to his palace where he declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican, as did his successors, until the Lateran Pacts of 1929.
Southern Italy
After Napoleon's defeat, King Ferdinand IV was restored by the Congress of Vienna of 1815 as Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. He established a concordat with the Papal States, which previously had a claim to the land. There were several rebellions on the island of Sicily against the King Ferdinand II but the end of the kingdom was only brought about by the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, led by Garibaldi, an icon of the Italian unification, with the support of the House of Savoy and their Kingdom of Sardinia. The expedition resulted in a striking series of defeats for the Sicilian armies against the growing troops of Garibaldi. After the capture of Palermo and Sicily, he disembarked in Calabria and moved towards Naples, while in the meantime the Piedmontese also invaded the Kingdom from the Marche. The last battles fought were that of the Volturnus in 1860 and the siege of Gaeta, where King Francis II had sought shelter, hoping for French help, which never came. The last towns to resist Garibaldi's expedition were Messina (which capitulated on 13 March 1861) and Civitella del Tronto (which capitulated on 20 March 1861). The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was dissolved and annexed to the new Kingdom of Italy, founded in the same year.
History of Sicily
The Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were officially merged in 1816 by Ferdinand I to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The accession of Ferdinand II as king of the Two Sicilies in 1830 was hailed by Sicilians; they dreamed that autonomy would be returned to the island and the problems of poverty and maladministration of justice would be tackled by the count of Syracuse, the king's brother and lieutenant in Sicily.
Kingdom of Sicily
From 1713 until 1720 the Kingdom of Sicily was ruled briefly by the House of Savoy, which had received it by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought an end to the War of the Spanish Succession. The kingdom was a reward to the Savoyards, who were thus elevated to royal rank. The new king, Victor Amadeus II, travelled to Sicily in 1713 and remained a year before returning to his mainland capital, Turin, where his son the Prince of Piedmont had been acting as regent. In Spain the results of the war had not been truly accepted, and the War of the Quadruple Alliance was the result. Sicily was occupied by Spain in 1718. When it became evident that Savoy had not the strength to defend as remote a country as Sicily, Austria stepped in and exchanged its Kingdom of Sardinia for Sicily. Victor Amadeus protested this exchange, Sicily being a rich country of over one million inhabitants and Sardinia a poor country of a few hundred thousand, but he was unable to resist his "allies". Spain was finally defeated in 1720, and the Treaty of the Hague ratified the changeover. Sicily belonged to the Austrian Habsburgs, who already ruled Naples. Victor Amadeus, for his part, continued to protest for three years, and only in 1723 decided to recognize the exchange and desist from using the Sicilian royal title and its subsidiary titles (such as King of Cyprus and Jerusalem).
List of monarchs of Sicily
The monarchs of Sicily ruled from the establishment of the County of Sicily in 1071 until the "perfect fusion" in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1816.
Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II
Following the Allied victory in North Africa the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky on 10 July 1943, with amphibious and airborne landings. The Germans were unable to prevent the Allied capture of the island but evacuated most of their troops and equipment to the mainland before the Allies entered Messina on 17 August. On 25 July, the Italian government deposed Mussolini, the Italian leader, who was subsequently arrested. The new government announced that it would continue the war but secretly commenced negotiations with the Allies.
History of Sicily
From the 11th century BC, Phoenicians begin to settle in western Sicily, having already started colonies on the nearby parts of North Africa. Within a century, we find major Phoenician settlements at Soloeis (Solunto), present day Palermo and Motya (an island near present-day Marsala). As Phoenician Carthage grew in power, these settlements came under its direct control.
List of monarchs of Sicily
Roger II received royal investiture from Antipope Anacletus II in 1130 and recognition from Pope Innocent II in 1139. The Kingdom of Sicily, which by then comprised not only the island, but also the southern third of the Italian peninsula, rapidly expanded itself to include Malta and the Mahdia, the latter if only briefly.
Sicily
The original classical-era inhabitants of Sicily comprised three defined groups of the ancient peoples of Italy. The most prominent and by far the earliest of these, the Sicani, who (Thucydides writes) arrived from the Iberian Peninsula (perhaps Catalonia). However, modern scholars suggest classifying the Sicani as an Illyrian tribe. Important historical evidence has been discovered in the form of cave drawings by the Sicani, dated from the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 8000 BC. The arrival of the first humans on the island correlates with the extinction of the Sicilian Hippopotamus and the dwarf elephant. The Elymians, thought to have come from the area of the Aegean Sea, became the next tribe to join the Sicanians on Sicily.
Italian ironclad Sicilia
"Sicilia" was named after the island of Sicily. She was built by the Venetian Arsenal in Venice. Her keel was laid down on 3 November 1884, and her completed hull was launched on 6 July 1891. At her launching ceremony, the new ship was christened by Queen Margherita. Fitting-out work was completed on 4 May 1895, after which the ship entered service with the Italian fleet.
History of Sicily
"See also: "
With the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1479, Sicily was ruled directly by the kings of Spain via governors and viceroys. In the ensuing centuries, authority on the island was to become concentrated among a small number of local barons.
Italian unification
Near Salemi, Garibaldi's army attracted scattered bands of rebels, and the combined forces defeated the opposing army at Calatafimi on 13 May. Within three days, the invading force had swelled to 4,000 men. On 14 May Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel. After waging various successful but hard-fought battles, Garibaldi advanced upon the Sicilian capital of Palermo, announcing his arrival by beacon-fires kindled at night. On 27 May the force laid siege to the Porta Termini of Palermo, while a mass uprising of street and barricade fighting broke out within the city.
Sicily
Sicily ( ; ) is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions, in Southern Italy along with surrounding minor islands, officially referred to as "Regione Siciliana".
Scicli
In 1091, it was conquered from the Arabs by the Normans, under Roger I of Hauteville, after a fierce battle. Scicli was one of the garrison which rebelled against the Angevine domination in the Sicilian Vespers (April 5, 1282). Following the various dynasties ruling the Kingdom of Sicily, it was an Aragonese-Spanish possession before being united in the Kingdom of Italy in the mid 19th century.
Norman conquest of southern Italy
After 250 years of Arab control, Sicily was inhabited by a mix of Christians, Arab Muslims, and Muslim converts at the time of its conquest by the Normans. Arab Sicily had a thriving trade network with the Mediterranean world, and was known in the Arab world as a luxurious & decadent place. It had originally been under the rule of the Aghlabids and then the Fatimids, but in 948 the Kalbids wrested control of the island and held it until 1053. During the 1010s and 1020s, a series of succession crises paved the way for interference by the Zirids of Ifriqiya. Sicily was racked by turmoil as petty fiefdoms battled each other for supremacy. Into this, the Normans under Robert Guiscard and his younger brother Roger Bosso came intending to conquer; the pope had conferred on Robert the title of "Duke of Sicily", encouraging him to seize Sicily from the Saracens.
Movement for the Independence of Sicily
The Movement for the Independence of Sicily ("Movimento per l'Indipendenza della Sicilia", MIS) was a separatist political movement with the goal of obtaining the independence of Sicily from Italy. The party has its roots in the Sicilian Independence Movement, which was founded by Andrea Finocchiaro in April 1943, and was active until 1947. The organization's youth movement was founded in 1944.
Sicily
No evidence survives of any warring between the tribes, but the Sicanians moved eastwards when the Elymians settled in the northwest corner of the island. The Sicels are thought to have originated in Liguria; they arrived from mainland Italy in 1200 BC and forced the Sicanians to move back across Sicily and to settle in the middle of the island. Other minor Italic groups who settled in Sicily included the Ausones (Aeolian Islands, Milazzo) and the Morgetes of Morgantina. Studies of genetic records reveal that peoples from various parts of the Mediterranean Basin mixed with the ancient inhabitants of Sicily, including Egyptians and Iberians.
Roger I of Sicily
Roger was born in Normandy, and came to southern Italy as a young man in 1057. He participated in several military expeditions against the Emirate of Sicily beginning in 1061. He was invested with part of Sicily and the title of count by his brother, Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, in 1071. By 1090, he had conquered the entire island. In 1091, he conquered Malta. The state he created was merged with the Duchy of Apulia in 1127 and became the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130.
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
A monarchy over the areas which would later become known as the Two Sicilies existed as one single kingdom, including a peninsular and an insular part, dating from the Middle Ages. The Norman king Roger II formed the Kingdom of Sicily by combining the County of Sicily with the southern part of the Italian Peninsula (then known as the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria) as well as with the Maltese Islands. The capital of this kingdom was Palermo — which is on the actual island of Sicily.
County of Sicily
Sicily was granted, pending its Christian reconquest, to Robert Guiscard as "duke" in 1059 by Pope Nicholas II. The Guiscard granted it as a county to his brother Roger.
Sicily
The Phoenician settlements in the western part of the island predates the Greeks. From about 750 BC, the Greeks began to live in Sicily (Σικελία – "Sikelia"), establishing many important settlements. The most important colony was in Syracuse; others were located at Akragas, Selinunte, Gela, Himera and Zancle. The native Sicani and Sicel peoples were absorbed into the Hellenic culture with relative ease, and the area became part of "Magna Graecia" along with the rest of southern Italy, which the Greeks had also colonised. Sicily was very fertile, and the successful introduction of olives and grape vines created a great deal of profitable trading. A significant part of Greek culture on the island was that of the Greek religion, and many temples were built throughout Sicily, including several in the "Valley of the Temples" at Agrigento.
History of Sicily
Sicily was merged with the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860 following the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi's "Mille"; after the Dictatorship of Garibaldi the annexation was ratified by a popular plebiscite. The Kingdom of Sardinia became in 1861 the Kingdom of Italy, in the context of the Italian "Risorgimento".
Roman Italy
The crisis of the third century hit Italy particularly hard and left the eastern half of the Empire more prosperous. Nevertheless, the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Malta were added to Italy by Diocletian in 292 AD, and Italian cities such as Milan and Ravenna continued to serve as capitals for the West. The Bishop of Rome gained importance during Constantine's reign and was given religious primacy with the Edict of Thessalonica under Theodosius I. Italy was invaded several times by the barbarians and fell under the control of Odoacer, when Romulus Augustus was deposed in 476 AD. In the sixth century, Italy's territory was divided between the Byzantine Empire and the Germanic peoples. After that, Italy remained divided until 1861, when it was reunited in the Kingdom of Italy, which became the present-day Italian Republic in 1946.
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (, , , ) was the largest of the states of Italy before the Italian unification. It was formed as a union of the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples, which collectively had long been called the "Two Sicilies" ("Utraque Sicilia", literally "both Sicilies").
Islam in Italy
The Italian island of Pantelleria (which lies between the western tip of Sicily and North Africa) was conquered by the Arabs in 700. The Arabs had earlier raided Roman Sicily in 652, 667 and 720 A.D.; Syracuse in the eastern end of the island was occupied for the first time temporarily in 708, but a planned invasion in 740 failed due to a rebellion of the Berbers of the Maghreb that lasted until 771 and civil wars in Ifriqiya lasting until 799. Arabian attacks on the island of Sardinia, less important than those on Sicily, failed to achieve its conquest although they induced its separation from the Roman Empire, giving birth to a period of Sardinian independence, the era of the "giudicati".
County of Sicily
When William died in 1127, Roger inherited the mainland duchy; three years later, in 1130 in Palermo, he merged his holdings to form the Kingdom of Sicily with the approval of Pope Anacletus II.
USS Sicily
USS "Sicily" (CVE-118) was a in the United States Navy. She was named in honor of the island of Sicily, which was the site of a major invasion during World War II. "Sicily" was laid down on 23 October 1944 by Todd-Pacific Shipyards, Tacoma, Washington, as "Sandy Bay"; launched on 14 April 1945; sponsored by Mrs. Julius Vanderwiele; renamed "Sicily" on 5 June 1945; and commissioned on 27 February 1946, Capt. B. W. Wright in command.
Sicilian Independence Movement
The movement was founded in September 1942 as Committee for the Independence of Sicily ("Comitato per l'Indipendenza della Sicilia", "CIS") finding inspiration in the Sicilian Vespers, with Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile serving as its first president. The movement included members of very different political views, such as revolutionary socialist Antonio Canepa, social-democrat Giovanni Guarino Amella, right-wing people, most of them aristocrats, such as baron Lucio Tasca and duke Guglielmo Paternò, and members with close ties to the Mafia, as well as outright Mafiosi such as Calogero Vizzini.
The movement gained presence and support following the Armistice of Cassibile of September 8, 1943, which forced Italy to abandon the island, while the U.S. troops still were on the verge of completing the military occupation of Sicily. In October 1943, Finocchiaro Aprile asked the King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III to abdicate, and successively gained support to his cause from about ten Sicilian deputies. In the spring of 1944, the CIS was disbanded and the Movement for the Independence of Sicily (MIS) was founded. During those days, the Allies prohibited any kind of political activity, but tolerated the existence of the MIS. Several politicians with strong ties with the Mafia, such as Calogero Vizzini and Calogero Volpe, joined the MIS; however, all of them soon later left the MIS in order to join the newborn Italian parties, such as the Christian Democracy.
Sicily
Sicily is a melting pot of a variety of different cultures and ethnicities, including the original Italic people, the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Aragonese, Lombards, Spaniards, French, and Albanians, each contributing to the island's culture and genetic makeup. About five million people live in Sicily, making it the fourth most populated region in Italy. In the first century after the Italian unification, Sicily had one of the most negative net migration rates among the regions of Italy because of the emigration of millions of people to other European countries, North America, South America and Australia. Like the South of Italy and Sardinia, immigration to the island is very low compared to other regions of Italy because workers tend to head to Northern Italy instead, due to better employment and industrial opportunities. The most recent ISTAT figures show around 175,000 immigrants out of the total of almost 5.1 million population (nearly 3.5% of the population); Romanians with more than 50,000 make up the most immigrants, followed by Tunisians, Moroccans, Sri Lankans, Albanians, and others mostly from Eastern Europe. As in the rest of Italy, the official language is Italian and the primary religion is Roman Catholicism.
Sicily
Following this, Sicily joined the Napoleonic Wars, and subsequently the British under Lord William Bentinck established a military and diplomatic presence on the island to protect against a French invasion. After the wars were won, Sicily and Naples formally merged as the Two Sicilies under the Bourbons. Major revolutionary movements occurred in 1820 and 1848 against the Bourbon government with Sicily seeking independence; the second of which, the 1848 revolution resulted in a short period of independence for Sicily. However, in 1849 the Bourbons retook control of the island and dominated it until 1860.
Sicilia (Roman province)
Sicilia () was the first province acquired by the Roman Republic. The western part of the island was brought under Roman control in 241 BC at the conclusion of the First Punic War with Carthage. A praetor was regularly assigned to the island from c.227 BC. The Kingdom of Syracuse under Hieron II remained an independent ally of Rome until its defeat in 212 BC during the Second Punic War. Thereafter the province included the whole of the island of Sicily, the island of Malta, and the smaller island groups (the Egadi islands, the Lipari islands, Ustica, and Pantelleria).
History of Italy (1559–1814)
On October 1797 Napoleon signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, by which the Republic of Venice was annexed to the Austrian state, dashing Italian nationalists' hopes that it might become an independent state. This treaty gave Austrian recognition to the existence of the Cisalpine Republic (made up of Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and small parts of Tuscany and Veneto), and annexed Piedmont to France. Even if, like the other states created by the invasion, the Cisalpine Republic was just a satellite of France, these satellites sparked a nationalist movement. The Cisalpine Republic was converted into the Italian Republic in 1802, under the presidency of Napoleon. As all of these republics were imposed by an outside force, none had any popular support in Italy, especially since the peasantry was alienated by Jacobin anti-clericalism. It would take a true grassroots movement to bring change. In addition, even native republicans became disillusioned when they realized that the French expected them to be obedient satellites of Paris, which included frequent interference in local affairs and massive taxes. Return to the old feudal order was however equally undesirable, and so the republican movement would gradually establish its goals as nationalism and a unified Italian state.
Italy
An Allied invasion of Sicily began in July 1943, leading to the collapse of the Fascist regime and the fall of Mussolini on 25 July. Mussolini was deposed and arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III in co-operation with members of the Grand Council of Fascism, who lost faith in him for having led Italy to ruin by allying with Germany. On 8 September, Italy signed the Armistice of Cassibile, ending its war with the Allies. The Germans helped by the Italian fascists shortly succeeded in taking control of northern and central Italy. The country remained a battlefield for the rest of the war, as the Allies were slowly moving up from the south.
Second Italian War of Independence
The next year, in 1860, with French and British approval, the central Italian states (Duchy of Parma, Duchy of Modena, Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States) were annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, and France would take its deferred reward, Savoy and Nice. The last move was vehemently opposed by Italian national hero Garibaldi, a native of Nice, and directly led to Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily, which would complete the preliminary Unification of Italy.
Sicily
Roger died in 1101. His wife Adelaide ruled until 1112, when their son Roger II of Sicily came of age. Having succeeded his brother Simon as Count of Sicily, Roger II was ultimately able to raise the status of the island to a kingdom in 1130, along with his other holdings, which included the Maltese Islands and the Duchies of Apulia and Calabria.
Italy
It was during the reign of Emperor Augustus that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula until the Alps. The islands of Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily and Malta were added to Italy by Diocletian in 292 AD.
Kingdom of Sicily
Charles abdicated in favour of Ferdinand, his third son, who acceded to the thrones with the names of Ferdinand IV of Naples and III of Sicily. Still a minor, Ferdinand grew up amongst pleasures and leisure while the real power was safely held by Bernardo Tanucci, the president of the regency council. During this period most of the reformation process initiated by Charles came to a halt, with the king mostly absent or uninterested in the matters of state and the political helm steered by Queen Maria Carolina and prime ministers Tanucci (until 1777) and John Acton. The latter managed to disentangle Naples and Sicily from the influence of Spain and Austria and to place them nearer to Great Britain, then represented by ambassador William Hamilton. This is the period of the Grand Tour, and Sicily with its many natural and historical attractions is visited by a score of intellectuals from all over Europe that on one side bring to the island the winds of the Enlightenment, and on the other side will spread the fame of its beauty in the continent. 
In 1799 Napoleon conquered Naples, forcing king Ferdinand and the court to flee to Sicily under the protection of the British fleet under the command of Horatio Nelson. While Naples was formed into the Parthenopaean Republic with French support and later again a kingdom under French protection and influence, Sicily became the British base of operation in the Mediterranean in the long struggle against Napoleon. Under British guidance, especially from Lord William Bentinck who was commander of British troops in Sicily, Sicily tried to modernise its constitutional apparatus, forcing the King to ratify a Constitution moulded over the British system. The island was under British occupation from 1806-14. The main feature of the new system was that a two-chamber parliament was formed (instead of the three of the existing one). The formation of the parliament brought the end of feudalism in the Kingdom.
Siculus
Thucydides and other Greek historians have suggested that he was the legendary progenitor of the Sicels (or Siculi), an Italic people who colonised Sicily three hundred years before the Ancient Greeks in 1050 BCE. The island was originally called Sicania after a previous legendary King called Sicanus.
List of viceroys of Sicily
This is a list of viceroys of Sicily:
At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Sicily was ceded to the Duke of Savoy.The Spanish invaded the kingdom in 1718 during the War of the Quadruple Alliance. The Duke of Savoy ceded it to Austria in 1720 by the Treaty of The Hague.Conquered by the Spanish in 1734 during the War of the Polish Succession, the kingdom was ceded to Charles I, Duke of Parma, a son of the King of Spain.In 1816 the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Sicily were merged into the new Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
History of Naples
On September 6, 1861, the kingdom was conquered by the Garibaldines and was handed over to the King of Sardinia: Garibaldi entered the city by train, descending in the square that today still bears his name. In October 1860 a plebiscite sanctioned the end of the Kingdom of Sicily and the birth of new Italian state, the United Kingdom of Italy.
Emirate of Sicily
Muslim Moors, who first invaded in 652, seized control of the entire island from the Byzantine Empire in a prolonged series of conflicts from 827 to 902, although Rometta in the far northeast of the island held out until 965. An Arab-Byzantine culture developed, producing a multiconfessional and multilingual state. The Emirate was conquered by Christian Norman mercenaries under Roger I of Sicily, who founded the County of Sicily in 1071. The last Muslim city in the island, Noto, was conquered in 1091.
Naples
In 1282, after the Sicilian Vespers, the Kingdom of Sicily was divided into two. The Angevin Kingdom of Naples included the southern part of the Italian peninsula, while the island of Sicily became the Aragonese Kingdom of Sicily. Wars between the competing dynasties continued until the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which saw Frederick III recognised as king of Sicily, while Charles II was recognised as king of Naples by Pope Boniface VIII. Despite the split, Naples grew in importance, attracting Pisan and Genoese merchants, Tuscan bankers, and some of the most prominent Renaissance artists of the time, such as Boccaccio, Petrarch and Giotto. During the 14th century, the Hungarian Angevin king Louis the Great captured the city several times. In 1442, Alfonso I conquered Naples after his victory against the last Angevin king, René, and Naples was unified with Sicily again for a brief period.
Kingdom of Sicily
Opposition to French officialdom and taxation combined with incitement of rebellion by agents from the Crown of Aragon and the Byzantine Empire led to the successful insurrection of the Sicilian Vespers followed by the invitation and intervention by king Peter III of Aragon in 1282. The resulting War of the Sicilian Vespers lasted until the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, dividing the old Kingdom of Sicily in two. The island of Sicily, called the "Kingdom of Sicily beyond the Lighthouse" or the Kingdom of Trinacria, went to Frederick III of the house of Aragon, who had been ruling it. The peninsular territories (the Mezzogiorno), contemporaneously called Kingdom of Sicily but called Kingdom of Naples by modern scholarship, went to Charles II of the house of Anjou, who had likewise been ruling it. Thus, the peace was formal recognition of an uneasy "status quo". The division in the kingdom became permanent in 1372, with the Treaty of Villeneuve. Though the king of Spain was able to seize both crowns in the 16th century, the administrations of the two halves of the Kingdom of Sicily remained separated until 1816, when they were reunited in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
Sicily
The island was used as a base of power numerous times, being occupied by slave insurgents during the First and Second Servile Wars, and by Sextus Pompey during the Sicilian revolt. Christianity first appeared in Sicily during the years following AD 200; between this time and AD 313, Constantine the Great finally lifted the prohibition on Christianity, but not before a significant number of Sicilians had become martyrs, including Agatha, Christina, Lucy, and Euplius. Christianity grew rapidly in Sicily over the next two centuries. The period of history during which Sicily was a Roman province lasted for around 700 years.
Italy Star
After their victory in North Africa, the Allies used their positions in Tunisia and Malta to invade Sicily, a campaign that lasted from 10 July to 17 August 1943. After this swift victory, the Allies pressed on into Italy on 3 September 1943, they also invading Italian-occupied Greece, Yugoslavia, Corsica and Sardinia. The campaign in Italy itself continued until the end of the war in Europe on 8 May 1945.
Sicily
Greek Syracuse controlled eastern Sicily while Carthage controlled the West. The two cultures began to clash, leading to the Greek-Punic wars. Greece had begun to make peace with the Roman Republic in 262 BC, and the Romans sought to annex Sicily as their republic's first province. Rome attacked Carthage's holdings in Sicily in the First Punic War and won, making Sicily the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula by 242 BC.
San Massimo
In 1815 the merger of the Kingdom of Naples, which included San Massimo, and that of Sicily led to the formation of the short lived Kingdom of Two Sicilies. In 1860, the Sardinian forces of Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered the region, leading to the formation of the Kingdom of Italy.
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
In 1860, Sicily was invaded by a corps of volunteers, led by Giuseppe Garibaldi from the Kingdom of Sardinia. They successfully conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and incorporated the territory into the new Kingdom of Italy.
History of Italy
The few independent city-states were also subdued. During the same period, the Normans also ended Muslim rule in Sicily. In 1130, Roger II of Sicily began his rule of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Roger II was the first King of Sicily and had succeeded in uniting all the Norman conquests in Southern Italy into one kingdom with a strong centralized government. In 1155, Emperor Manuel Komnenos attempted to regain Southern Italy from the Normans, but the attempt failed and in 1158 the Byzantines left Italy. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily lasted until 1194 when Sicily was claimed by the German Hohenstaufen Dynasty. The Kingdom of Sicily would last under various dynasties until the 19th century.
Sicily
Strong opposition to French officialdom due to mistreatment and taxation saw the local peoples of Sicily rise up, leading in 1282 to an insurrection known as the War of the Sicilian Vespers, which eventually saw almost the entire French population on the island killed. During the war, the Sicilians turned to Peter III of Aragon, son-in-law of the last Hohenstaufen king, for support after being rejected by the Pope. Peter gained control of Sicily from the French, who, however, retained control of the Kingdom of Naples. A crusade was launched in August 1283 against Peter III and the Kingdom of Aragon by Pope Martin IV (a pope from Île-de-France), but it failed. The wars continued until the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which saw Peter's son Frederick III recognised as king of the Isle of Sicily, while Charles II was recognised as the king of Naples by Pope Boniface VIII. Sicily was ruled as an independent kingdom by relatives of the kings of Aragon until 1409 and then as part of the Crown of Aragon. In October 1347, in Messina, Sicily, the Black Death first arrived in Europe.
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The peninsula was divided into fifteen departments and Sicily was divided into seven departments. The island itself had a special administrative status, with its base at Palermo. In 1860, when the Two Sicilies were conquered by the Kingdom of Sardinia, the departments became provinces of Italy, according to the Rattazzi law.
Sicilian language
In 535, Justinian I made Sicily a Byzantine province, which returned the Greek language to a position of prestige, at least on an official level. At this point in time the island could be considered a border zone with high levels of bilingualism: Latinisation was mostly concentrated in western Sicily, whereas Eastern Sicily remained predominantly Greek. As the power of the Byzantine Empire waned, Sicily was progressively conquered by Saracens from North Africa ("Ifriqiya"), from the mid 9th to mid 10th centuries. The Emirate of Sicily persisted long enough to develop a distinctive local variety of Arabic, Siculo-Arabic (at present extinct in Sicily but surviving as the Maltese language). Its influence is noticeable in around 100 Sicilian words, most of which relate to agriculture and related activities. This is understandable because of the Arab Agricultural Revolution; the Saracens introduced to Sicily their advanced irrigation and farming techniques and a new range of crops, nearly all of which remain endemic to the island to this day.
Land reform in Sicily
In the 1860s, After Italy annexed Sicily in the Italian unification wars, it redistributed a large share of public and church land to private citizens.
Italian Maltese
Officially Malta (even if ruled for some centuries by the Knights of Malta and later occupied by the French and the British) was part of the Kingdom of Sicily until the Congress of Vienna in 1814, when it was given to Great Britain.
History of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
Modern Italy became a nation-state during the Risorgimento on March 17, 1861, when most of the states of the Italian Peninsula and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were united under king Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy, hitherto king of Sardinia, a realm that included Piedmont.
Muslim conquest of Sicily
Under Muslim rule, Sicily prospered and eventually detached itself from Ifriqiya to form a semi-independent emirate. The island's Muslim community survived the Norman conquest in the 1060s and even prospered under the Norman kings, giving birth to a unique cultural mix, until it was deported to Lucera in the 1220s after a failed uprising.
Flag of Sicily
The flag of Sicily (; ) was first adopted in 1282, after the successful Sicilian Vespers revolt against the king Charles I of Sicily. This flag bears a resemblance to the flag of the Isle of Man.
History of Sicily
The most significant changes that the Normans were to bring to Sicily were in the areas of religion, language and population. Almost from the moment that Roger I controlled much of the island, immigration was encouraged from both France, North Europe, England, Northern Italy and Campania. For the most part, these consisted of Normans and Lombards who were Vulgar Latin variety-speaking and more inclined to support the Western church. With time, Sicily would become overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and a new vulgar Latin idiom would emerge that was distinct to the island.
Sicilian language
When the two most famous of Southern Italy's Norman adventurers, Roger of Hauteville and his brother, Robert Guiscard, began their conquest of Sicily in 1061, they already controlled the far south of Italy (Apulia and Calabria). It took Roger 30 years to complete the conquest of Sicily (Robert died in 1085). In the aftermath of the Norman conquest of Sicily, the revitalization of Latin in Sicily had begun, and some Norman and Norman-French words would be absorbed: but many etymologies are disputed and the only sure marker of a typical Norman word is its Scandinavian origin, such words do not exist in Sicilian.
Emirate of Sicily
The Emirate of Sicily began to fragment as intra-dynastic quarrels took place within the Muslim regime. In 1044, under emir Hasan al-Samsam, who established al-Samsam Emirate of Sicily, the island fragmented into four qadits, or small fiefdoms: the qadit of Trapani, Marsala, Mazara and Sciacca, a certain Abdallah ibn Mankut; that of Girgenti, Castrogiovanni and Castronuovo (Ibn al-Hawwàs); that of Palermo and Catania; and that of Syracuse (Ibn Thumna). By 1065, all of them had been unified by Ayyub ibn Tamim, the son of the Zirid emir of Ifriqiyya. In 1068 he left Sicily, and what remained under Muslim control fell under two qadits: one, led by Ibn Abbad (known as Benavert in western chronicles) in Syracuse, and the other under Hammud in Qas'r Ianni (modern Enna).
Kingdom of Sicily
After 1302 the island kingdom was sometimes called the Kingdom of Trinacria. Often the kingship was vested in another monarch such as the King of Aragon, the King of Spain, or the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1816 the island Kingdom of Sicily merged with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1861 the Two Sicilies were amalgamated with Sardinia and several northern city-states and duchies to form the Kingdom of Italy.
Sicily
Significantly, immigrants from Northern Italy and Campania arrived during this period. Linguistically, the island shifted from being one third Greek- and two-thirds Arabic-speaking at the time of the Norman conquest to becoming fully Latinised. In terms of the church, it became completely Roman Catholic; previously, it had been Eastern Orthodox under the Byzantines.
Emirate of Sicily
The Emirate of Sicily () was an emirate on the island of Sicily which existed from 831 to 1091. Its capital was Palermo.
History of Italy
In 1805, after the French victory over the Third Coalition and the Peace of Pressburg, Napoleon recovered Veneto and Dalmatia, annexing them to the Italian Republic and renaming it the Kingdom of Italy. Also that year a second satellite state, the Ligurian Republic (successor to the old Republic of Genoa), was pressured into merging with France. In 1806, he conquered the Kingdom of Naples and granted it to his brother and then (from 1808) to Joachim Murat, along with marrying his sisters Elisa and Paolina off to the princes of Massa-Carrara and Guastalla. In 1808, he also annexed Marche and Tuscany to the Kingdom of Italy.
Italian Maltese
During the Middle Ages the Maltese islands were integrated with Sicily (even during the Arab conquest). The Normans politically united Malta to their Kingdom of Sicily and since then practically all the history of the Maltese islands has been connected to southern Italy, at least until Napoleonic times.
Sicilian revolution of 1848
The former kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were formally reunited following the 1815 Congress of Vienna to become the Bourbon kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Both kingdoms had previously comprised the single Kingdom of Sicily (created by the Normans in the 11th century) during the 12th and 13th centuries, and were split in two following the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282.
First Italian War of Independence
At the beginning of 1848, all of Sicily had revolted against the Bourbons and defeated the army of Ferdinand II. A new constitution was approved and on 10 July, the Sicilian Parliament spontaneously elected Ferdinand of Savoy, Duke of Genoa, as their new king. He decided that he had to refuse the offer, given the serious military situation in Savoy at the time. The refusal of the Duke of Genoa led to serious weakening of the Sicilian government, even as a military force departed from Naples, on 30 August 1848, led by Carlo Filangieri, prince of Satriano, who would reconquer Sicily in 1849.
Islam in Italy
The cultural and economical bloom in Sicily that had started under the Kalbids was interrupted by internecine fights, followed by invasions by the Tunisian Zirids (1027), Pisa (1030–1035), and the Romans (1027 onwards). Eastern Sicily (Messina, Syracuse and Taormina) was captured by the Byzantines in 1038–1042. In 1059 Normans from southern Italy, led by Roger I, invaded the island. The Normans conquered Reggio in 1060 (conquered by the Romanin 1027). Messina fell to the Normans in 1061; an invasion by the Algerian Hammadids to preserve Islamic rule was thwarted in 1063 by the fleets of Genoa and Pisa. The loss of Palermo in 1072 and of Syracuse in 1088 could not be prevented. Noto and the last Muslim strongholds on Sicily fell in 1091. In 1090–91 the Normans also conquered Malta; Pantelleria fell in 1123.
Military history of Italy during World War II
On 10 July 1943, a combined force of American and British Commonwealth troops invaded Sicily. German generals again took the lead in the defence and, although they lost the island after weeks of bitter fights, they succeeded in ferrying large numbers of German and Italian forces safely off Sicily to the Italian mainland. On 19 July, an Allied air raid on Rome destroyed both military and collateral civil installations. With these two events, popular support for the war diminished in Italy.
History of Islam in southern Italy
In 805, the imperial patrician of Sicily, Constantine, signed a ten-year truce with Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab, Emir of Ifriqiya, but this did not prevent Muslim fleets from other areas of Africa and Spain from attacking Sardinia and Corsica from 806–821. In 812, Ibrahim's son, Abdallah I, sent an invasion force to conquer Sicily. His ships were first harassed by the intervention of Gaeta and Amalfi and were later destroyed in great number by a tempest. However, they managed to conquer the island of Lampedusa and to ravage Ponza and Ischia in the Tyrrhenian Sea. A further agreement between the new patrician Gregorius and the emir established the freedom of commerce between southern Italy and Ifriqiya. After a further attack in 819 by Mohammed ibn-Adballad, cousin of Amir Ziyadat Allah I of Ifriqiya, no subsequent Muslim attacks on Sicily are mentioned by sources until 827.
Sicilian Baroque
Sicily, a volcanic island in the central Mediterranean, off the Italian peninsula, has been colonised by the Greeks, then it was under the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ostrogoths, the Muslims, the Normans, the Hohenstaufen, the Angevins and the Aragonese, after whom it became a province of the Spanish Empire and then was part of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, before finally being absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy in 1860. Thus Sicilians have been exposed to a rich sequence of disparate cultures; this is reflected in the extraordinary diversity of architecture on the island.
Sicilian revolution of 1848
Thus Sicily survived as a quasi-independent state for sixteen months, with the Bourbon army taking back full control of the island on 15 May 1849 by force. The effective head of state during this period was Ruggero Settimo. On capitulating to the Bourbons, Settimo escaped to Malta where he was received with the full honours of a head of state. He remained exiled there for the rest of his life and died there in 1863. Upon the formation of the new Kingdom of Italy in 1861, Settimo was offered the position of first President of the Senate of the newly created national parliament, but he was forced to decline for health reasons. Nevertheless, this invitation provides more than a casual hint as to the nexus that existed between the events of 1848 and 1860-61 in the History of Italy.
Italian Social Republic
In July 1943, after the Allies had pushed Italy out of North Africa and subsequently invaded Sicily, the Grand Fascist Council—with the support of King Victor Emmanuel III—overthrew and arrested Mussolini. The new government began secret peace negotiations with the Allied powers. When the Armistice of Cassibile was announced 8 September, Germany was prepared and quickly intervened. Germany seized control of the northern half of Italy, freed Mussolini and brought him to the German-occupied area to establish a satellite regime. The Italian Social Republic was proclaimed on 23 September 1943. Although the RSI claimed most of the lands of Italy as rightfully belonging to it, it held political control over a vastly reduced portion of Italy. The RSI received diplomatic recognition from only Germany, Japan and their puppet states.
Salemi
Salemi is where Giuseppe Garibaldi announced the annexation of Sicily on May 14, 1860, as part of the Expedition of the Thousand, briefly making the town his headquarters after his landing at Marsala two days earlier.
Military history of Italy
Sicily was invaded in 1266 by Charles I, duke of Anjou; the Angevines were however toppled in the 1282 Sicilian Vespers, and Peter III of Aragon invaded the island. This set the background for later French claims over Naples and Sicily.
History of Italy
Italy became a nation-state belatedly on 17 March 1861, when most of the states of the peninsula were united under king Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy, which ruled over Piedmont. The architects of Italian unification were Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, a general and national hero. In 1866, Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck offered Victor Emmanuel II an alliance with the Kingdom of Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War. In exchange Prussia would allow Italy to annex Austrian-controlled Venice. King Emmanuel agreed to the alliance and the Third Italian War of Independence began. The victory against Austria allowed Italy to annex Venice. The one major obstacle to Italian unity remained Rome.
War of the Sicilian Vespers
Sicily had been part of a Kingdom of Sicily, which also encompassed the southern Italian peninsula, since the early 12th century, when Roger II of Sicily defeated the Italian mainland barons and was elected king by the pope. His reign had been inherited by Frederick II of Sicily, whose son Manfred was however ousted by the French invasion of Charles I of Anjou in 1266. The French rule soon assumed a repressive and ferocious character.
Kingdom of Sicily
On October 21, 1860 a plebiscite regarding the unification with Italy was conducted. The outcome of the referendum was 432,053 (99%) in favour and only 667 in opposition to the unification. With three separate armies still fighting within the Kingdom, this outcome was far from an accurate depiction of public opinion. Substantial inconsistencies as well as the absence of secret ballot further complicate the interpretation of the referendum, which Dennis Mack Smith describes as being "obviously rigged". Most Sicilians viewed the unification as acceptance of the House of Savoy, in which belonged Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Italy.
List of historic states of Italy
Italy, up until the Italian unification in 1860, was a conglomeration of city-states, republics, and other independent entities. The following is a list of the various Italian states during that period.
The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was signed between Elizabeth I of England and Henry II of France on 2 April and between Henry II and Philip II of Spain on 3 April 1559, at Le Cateau-Cambrésis. Under its terms, France restored Piedmont and Savoy to the Duke of Savoy, and Corsica to the Republic of Genoa. The Papacy and Venice remained independent. The treaty confirmed Spanish direct control of Milan, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and the State of Presidi.By the Treaty of Utrecht's provisions, the European empire of Spain was divided. In Italy, the Duchy of Savoy received Sicily and parts of the Duchy of Milan, while Charles VI (the Archduke of Austria) received the Kingdom of Naples, Sardinia, and the bulk of the Duchy of Milan along with other minor states.Following the defeat of Napoleonic France, the Congress of Vienna (1815) was convened to redraw the European continent. In Italy, the Congress restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments, either directly ruled or strongly influenced by the prevailing European powers, particularly Austria. The Congress also determined the end of two millenary republics: Genoa was annexed by Sardinia, and Venice was incorporated with Milan into a new kingdom of the Austrian Empire. At the time, the struggle for Italian unification was perceived to be waged primarily against the Habsburgs, since they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of present-day Italy and were, together, the most powerful force against unification. The Austrian Empire vigorously repressed nationalist sentiment growing on the Italian peninsula, as well as in the other parts of Habsburg domains.
Sicily (theme)
The Muslim conquest of the island began in 826. Following the fall of Syracuse in 878 and the conquest of Taormina in 902, the "strategos" moved to Rhegion, the capital of Calabria. During the first half of the 10th century, the Byzantines launched a number of failed expeditions to regain the island and maintained a few isolated strongholds near Messina until 965, when Rometta, the last Byzantine outpost, fell. The post of ""strategos" of Sicily" was thus retained as the official title until the mid-10th century, when the ""strategos" of Calabria" begins to appear in the lists.
History of Sicily
The constant warfare between Carthage and the Greek city-states eventually opened the door to an emerging third power. In the 3rd 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 the war in (242 BC), and with the death of Hiero II, all of Sicily except Syracuse was in Roman hands, becoming Rome's first province outside of the Italian peninsula.
History of Rome
The return of Pope Pius IX in Rome, with help of French troops, marked the exclusion of Rome from the unification process that was embodied in the Second Italian Independence War and the "Mille" expedition, after which all the Italian peninsula, except Rome and Venetia, would be unified under the House of Savoy. Garibaldi first attacked Sicily, luckily under the guise of passing British ships and landing with little resistance.
Giuseppe Mazzini
The new Kingdom of Italy was created in 1861 under the Savoy monarchy. In 1862, Mazzini joined Garibaldi in his failed attempt to free Rome. In 1866, Italy joined the Austro-Prussian War and gained Venetia. At this time Mazzini frequently spoke out against how the unification of his country was being achieved, and in 1867 he refused a seat in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. In 1870, he tried to start a rebellion in Sicily, and was arrested and imprisoned in Gaeta. He was freed in October, in the amnesty declared after the Kingdom finally took Rome, and returned to London in mid-December.
Sicily (theme)
The Theme of Sicily (, "thema Sikelias") was a Byzantine province (theme) existing from the late 7th to the 10th century, encompassing the island of Sicily and the region of Calabria in the Italian mainland. Following the Muslim conquest of Sicily, from 902 the theme was limited to Calabria, but retained its original name until the middle of the 10th century.
County of Sicily
The County of Sicily, also known as County of Sicily and Calabria, was a Norman state comprising the islands of Sicily and Malta and part of Calabria from 1071 until 1130. The county began to form during the Christian reconquest of Sicily (1061–91) from the Muslim Emirate, established by conquest in 965. The county is thus a transitional period in the history of Sicily. After the Muslims had been defeated and either forced out or incorporated into the Norman military, a further period of transition took place for the county and the Sicilians.
Italians
During the subsequent Swabian rule under the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who spent most of his life as king of Sicily in his court in Palermo, Muslims was progressively eradicated until the massive deportation of the last Muslims of Sicily. As a result of Arab expulsion, many towns across Sicily were left depopulated. By the 12th century, Swabian kings granted immigrants from northern Italy (particularly Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria), Latium and Tuscany in central Italy, and French regions of Normandy, Provence and Brittany (all collectively known as "Lombards".) settlement into Sicily, re-establishing the Latin element into the island, a legacy which can be seen in the many Gallo-Italic dialects and towns found in the interior and western parts of Sicily, brought by these settlers. It is believed that the Lombard immigrants in Sicily over a couple of centuries were a total of about 200,000.
Sacile
The coming of the railway in 1855 did much to restore the economic position of Sacile. In 1866 Sacile was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy and saw the beginnings of industrial activity.
Sicilians
As the Roman Empire was falling apart, a Germanic tribe known as the Vandals took over Sicily in 468 AD (after taking Carthage in 439 they tried several times but failed to take the island) under the rule of their king Geiseric. However, they soon lost these newly acquired possessions, except one toehole in Lilybaeum, to Odoacer in 476 and completely to the Ostrogothic conquest of Sicily by Theodoric the Great which began in 488; although the Goths were Germanic, Theodoric sought to revive Roman culture and government and allowed freedom of religion. The Gothic War took place between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantine Empire, and during the reign of Justinian I, Sicily was brought back under Greco-Roman rule, and Greek language and religion were embraced by the majority of the population. It was Syracuse where the Byzantine Emperor Constans II desired to move his capital in 663 AD, a decision which eventually led to his assassination. Sicily remained under Byzantine rule for several centuries, until an invasion by Arab Muslims (Aghlabids) in the 9th century. The Muslim conquest was a see-saw affair; the local population resisted fiercely and the Arabs suffered considerable dissension and infighting among themselves. Not until 965 was the island's conquest successfully completed, with Syracuse in particular resisting almost to the end.
History of Western civilization
In the city-states of Italy, many argued for a unification of all the Italian kingdoms into a single nation. Obstacles to this included the many Italian dialects spoken by the people of Italy, and the Austrian presence in the north of the peninsula. Unification of the peninsula began in 1859. The powerful Kingdom of Sardinia (also called Savoy or Piedmont) formed an alliance with France and went to war with Austria in that year. The war ended with a Sardinian victory, and Austrian forces left Italy. Plebiscites were held in several cities, and the majority of people voted for union with Sardinia, creating the Kingdom of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II. In 1860, the Italian nationalist Garibaldi led revolutionaries in an overthrow of the government of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. A plebiscite held there resulted in a unification of that kingdom with Italy. Italian forces seized the eastern Papal States in 1861. In 1866 Venetia became part of Italy after Italy's ally, Prussia, defeated that kingdom's rulers, the Austrians, in Austro-Prussian War. In 1870, Italian troops conquered the Papal States, completing unification. Pope Pius IX refused to recognize the Italian government or negotiate settlement for the loss of Church land.
Sicily
In 535, Emperor Justinian I made Sicily a Byzantine province and, as in Roman times, Greek continued to be the predominate language spoken on the island. After the advent of Islam, Sicily was invaded by the Arab forces of Caliph Uthman in 652, but the Arabs failed to make any permanent gains and returned to Syria after gathering some booty. Raids seeking loot continued until the mid-8th century.
Byzantine–Norman wars
Over a thirty year period (1061-1091), Norman factions also completed the initial Byzantine attempt to retake Sicily. However, it would not be until 1130 that both Sicily and southern Italy were united into one kingdom, formalized by Roger II of Sicily.
Sicels
The Sicels (; ; "Sikeloi") were an Italic tribe who inhabited eastern Sicily during the Iron Age. Their neighbours to the west were the Sicani. The Sicels gave Sicily the name it has held since antiquity, but they rapidly fused into the culture of Magna Graecia.
Music of Sicily
The Music of Sicily refers to music created by peoples from the isle of Sicily. It was shaped by the island's history, from the island's great presence as part of Magna Grecia 2,500 years ago, through various historical incarnations as a part of the Roman Empire, then an integral part of the Kingdom of Sicily, and, finally, as an autonomous region of the modern nation state of Italy.