Sicilian Region

Sicily officially called the Sicilian Region, is an autonomous region with a special statute of 5 017 216 inhabitants, with Palermo as its capital.

The territory of the region consists almost entirely of the homonymous island, the largest island in Italy and the Mediterranean, as well as the 45th largest island in the world. The remaining part is made up of the archipelagos of the Aeolian, Egadi and Pelagie islands and the islands of Ustica and Pantelleria.

It is the largest region in Italy and its territory is divided into 390 municipalities which are in turn made up of three metropolitan cities (Palermo, Catania and Messina) and six free municipal consortia.

It is the fourth region by population (after Lombardy, Lazio and Campania). It is bathed to the north by the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the west by the Sicilian Channel, to the south by the Sicilian Sea, to the east by the Ionian Sea and to the north-east by the Strait of Messina which separates it from Calabria.

Sicily is divided into 6 Free Municipal Consortia and 3 Metropolitan Cities:

Capital city Palermo

Catania

Messina

Agrigento

Caltanissetta

Enna

Ragusa

Syracuse

Drills

The oldest human traces on the island date back to 12,000 BC. approximately. In the protohistoric era, cultures called Thapsos, Castelluccio and Stentinello flourished. Peoples from the continent settled there later: among them the Sicani, the Siculi and the Elymians.

The eighth century BC saw Sicily colonized by the Phoenicians and above all by the Greeks and in the following 600 years it became the battlefield of the Greco-Punic and Roman-Punic wars.

The island was thus subjected by the Romans and was part of the empire until its fall in the 5th century AD. It was therefore a land of conquest and, during the High Middle Ages, conquered by Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans with the latter who founded the Kingdom of Sicily.

The Normans were the only Nordic people (northern Germans) to conquer and found a Nordic state in southern Europe, the Kingdom of Sicily, which lasted from 1130 to 1816; it was conquered by the Angevins and with the revolt of the vespers it passed to the Aragonese.

The island then became a viceroyalty of Spain, passed briefly to the Savoy and Austria and, finally, in the 18th century, to the Bourbons, under whom, united the kingdom of Sicily to the kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of the Two arose in 1816. Sicilies.

Sicily was united to the Italian state in 1860 with a plebiscite, following the expedition of the Thousand led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Risorgimento.

Since 1946 Sicily has become an autonomous region, and since 1947 it has once again had its own parliament, the Sicilian Regional Assembly or ARS, established even before the birth of the Italian Republic.

Map: Sicilian Region