How can Italy's Airline forget to put Sicily on its Tourist Map??? Even an Italian Sarah Palin couldn't be that Dumb!!!
Italy is subdivided into 20 regions Five of these regions (Sicily, Sardinia, Aosta, Friuli, Trentino) have a special autonomous status that enables them to enact legislation on some of their local matters. Sicily is the largest of all the 20 Regions of Italy.
Northern Italy was inconsequential as compared to Sicily and Southern Italy, and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) until the Italian Renaissance. Sicily and Southern Italy have been Nothing since the "Reunification" of Italy.
Sicilians have long Labored for Separation from Italy. Is this a sign, that the time is now???
No One Seems to Know the Importance of Sicily to Mediterranean History, that was predominated in Western Civilization until the Anglo Saxons were Civilized by the Italian Renaissance. Mediterranean Culture borrowed from the Mid East Civilizations of Babylon and Persia. I'll try to remedy that unawareness of SICILY later in this Report. Sicily has a FASCINATING HISTORY being THE STRATEGIC Location in the Mediterranean, since Sicily CONTROLLED all EAST-WEST Mediterranean Trade !!!!!!!!! The Distance between Sicily and Africa is just 90 miles !!!!!!
Alitalia Sorry as Sicily Vanishes
BBC NEWS; June 18 2009
*Italian airline Alitalia has apologised after its in-flight magazine printed a map leaving off the Mediterranean island of Sicily. *
The magazine's editor blamed the error on a printing mistake, and pledged not to let it happen again.
A passenger told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that she noticed Sicily was missing - while she was on a flight to the island.
Smaller islands, such as Sardinia, were in the right place on the map.....
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SICILY
How many people know that Sicily (and Southern Italy) as Magna Grecia (admittedly singular Colonies tied to Cities in Grecia Minor) FAR outstripped Grecia Minor in Culture and Learning. Archemedes was born and died in Syracuse. Pythagoras, established his School of Philosophy in Sicily, after he escaped the stifling, suffocating Grecia Minor. The List of Intellects that choose Grecia Major , or were born there is staggering .
The Peloponnese got their civilization from the Minoan civilization in Crete and then the Mycenean civilization on the mainland. Later, City-States emerged across the Greek Peninsula. Athens and Sparta led the way in repelling the Persian Empire in a series of battles. Both were later overshadowed by Thebes and eventually Macedon, with the latter under the guidance of Alexander the Great uniting and leading the Greek world to victory over the Persians.
Cicero described Siracusa as the greatest and most beautiful city of all Ancient Greece. Syracuse became desired by the Athenians, who during the Peloponnesian War set out on the Sicilian Expedition. Syracuse gained Sparta and Corinth as allies, and after the failure of the Athenian expedition, the Athenian army and ships were destroyed, with most of the survivors being sold into slavery.
While Syracuse controlled much of Sicily, there were a few Carthaginian colonies in the far west of the island. When the two cultures began to clash, the Punic Wars erupted, the longest wars of antiquity. Greece began to make peace with the Roman Republic in 262 BC and the Romans sought to annex Sicily as its empire's first province. Rome intervened in the First Punic War, crushing Carthage so that by 242 BC Sicily had become the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula. The Second Punic War, in which Archemedes was killed, saw Carthage trying to take Sicily from the Roman Empire. They failed and this time Rome was even more unrelenting in the annihilation of the invaders; during 210 BC the Roman consul M. Valerian, told the Roman Senate that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".
Sicily served a level of high importance for the Romans as it acted as the empire's granary.When Verres became governor of Sicily, the once prosperous and contented people were put into sharp decline, in 70 BC noted figure Cicero condemned the misgovernment of Verres in his oration. The period of history where Sicily was a Roman province lasted for around 700 years in total.
As the Roman Empire was falling apart, a Germanic tribe known as the Vandals took Sicily in AD 440 they soon lost these newly acquired possessions to another East Germanic tribe in the form of the Goths. The Ostrogothic conquest of Sicily (and Italy as a whole) under Theodoric the Great 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 Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. Sicily was the first part of Italy to be taken under general Belisarius who was commissioned by Eastern Emperor Justinian I. Sicily was used as a base for the Byzantines to conquer the rest of Italy, with Naples, Rome, Milan and the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna falling within five years. However, a new Ostrogoth king Totila, drove down the Italian peninsula, plundering and conquering Sicily in 550. Totila, in turn, was defeated and killed in the Battle of Taginae by the Byzantine general Narses in 552.In 535, Emperor Justinian I made Sicily a Byzantine province.
As the power of the Byzantine Empire waned, Sicily was invaded by the Arab forces of Caliph Uthman in the year 652. By the end of the 7th century they had captured the nearby port city of Carthage, allowing the Arabs to build shipyards and a permanent base from which to make more sustained attacks.
Byzantine Emperor Constans II decided to move from the capital Constantinople to Syracuse in Sicily during 660, the following year he launched an assault from Sicily against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, which then occupied most of Southern Italy.
When Emperor Michael II in 826, reprimanded Euphemius the commander of the Byzantine fleet of Sicily, Euphemius killed General Constantine and then occupied Syracuse; he in turn was defeated and driven out to North Africa. He offered rule of Sicily over to Ziyadat Allah the Aghlabid Emir of Tunisia in return for a place as a general and safety; a Muslim army of Arabs, Berbers, Spaniards (then an Islamic region), Cretans and Persians was sent The conquest was a see-saw affair met with much resistance. It took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be conquered. Syracuse held for a long time, Taormina fell in 902, and all of Sicily was eventually conquered by Arabs in 965.
The Arabs initiated land reforms which in turn, increased productivity and encouraged the growth of smallholdings, a dent to the dominance of the landed estates. The Arabs further improved irrigation systems. The Palermo suburb of Al-Khalisa (Kalsa) contained the Sultan's palace, baths, a mosque, government offices, and a private prison.
Throughout this reign, revolts by Byzantine Sicilians continuously occurred, especially in the east, and parts of the island were re-occupied before being quashed. Agricultural items such as oranges, lemons, pistachio and sugar cane were brought to Sicily. As dhimmis, the native Christians were allowed freedom of religion, but had to pay an extra tax to their rulers.
However, the Emirate of Sicily began to fragment as intra-dynastic quarreling fractured the Muslim regime. By the 11th century, mainland southern Italian powers hired Norman merecenaries, under Roger Guiscard. In 1068, Roger and his men defeated the Arabs at Misilmeri, but the most crucial battle was the siege of Palermo, which led to Sicily coming completely under Norman control by 1091.
Roger II of Sicily, was ultimately able to raise the status of the island to a kingdom in 1130, that included Apulia and Calabria. During this period the Kingdom of Sicily was prosperous and politically powerful, becoming one of the wealthiest states in all of Europe; even wealthier than England.
While the Austrians were concerned with the War of the Polish Succession, in 1733, a Bourbon prince, Charles from Spain was able to conquer Sicily and Naples. At first Sicily was able to remain as an independent kingdom under personal union, while the Bourbons ruled over both from Naples. However the advent of Napoleon's First French Empire saw Naples taken and Bonapartist Kings of Naples were instated. Ferdinand III the Bourbon was forced to retreat to Sicily which he was still in complete control of with the help of British naval protection. Following this Sicily joined the Napoleonic Wars, 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 was successful and resulted in a period of independence for Sicily.
2 comments:
They were probably using the same researcher tht Obama did when he counted the 57 states of the United States.
Get the DVD of the 1964 film "Sedotta e Abbandonata", by Pietro Germi,and meditate on the scene of the NCO of the Carabinieri looking at a map of Italy - with and without the island.
This was just wishful thinking.
Yuri
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