Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies lasted from 1815 until 1860, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia to form the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. The capitals of the Two Sicilies were in Naples and in Palermo. The kingdom extended over the Mezzogiorno (the southern part of mainland Italy) and the island of Sicily. Jordan Lancaster notes that the integration of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the Kingdom of Italy changed the status of Naples forever: "Abject poverty meant that, throughout Naples and Southern Italy, thousands decided to leave in search of a better future." Many went to the new world. The kingdom was heavily agricultural, like the other Italian states; the church owned 50–65% of the land by 1750.
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.