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Sack Of Palermo
The sack of Palermo is the popular term for the construction boom from the 1950s through the mid-1980s in Palermo, Italy, that led to the destruction of the city's green belt and historic villas to make way for characterless and shoddily-constructed apartment blocks. In the meantime, Palermo's historic centre, severely damaged by Allied bombing raids in 1943, was allowed to decay. The bombing condemned nearly 150,000 people to live in crowded slums, shantytowns, and even caves.Schneider & Schneider (2003). ''Reversible Destiny'', p. 14-19 Background Between 1951 and 1961, the population of Palermo had risen by 100,000, caused by a rapid urbanization of Sicily after World War II as land reform and mechanization of agriculture created a massive peasant exodus and rural landlords moved their investment into urban real estate. This led to an unregulated and undercapitalised construction boom from the 1950s through the mid-1980s that was characterised by the aggressive involvemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palermo
Palermo ( ; ; , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. 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 Isla Palermo 734 BC by the Phoenicians as ("flower"). Palermo then became a possession of Ancient Carthage, Carthage. Two ancient Greeks, Greek ancient Greek colonization, colonies were established, known collectively as ; the Carthaginians used this name on their coins after the 5th centuryBC. As , the town became part of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, Empire for over a thousand years. From 831 to 1072 the city was under History of Islam in south ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernesto Basile
Ernesto Basile (31 January 1857 – 26 August 1932, in Palermo) was an Italian architect and an exponent of modernisme and Liberty style, the Italian variant of Art Nouveau. His style was known for its eclectic fusion of ancient, medieval and modern elements. Life He was born in Palermo to a father Giovanni Battista Filippo Basile was also an architect and a professor at the University of Palermo. Ernesto graduated in 1878 as an architect in Palermo in the Royal School of Engineering and Architecture (). During the 1880s he lived in Rome. There in 1887 he married Ida Negrini and became assistant professor at the University of Rome. In the following years he was appointed professor of technical architecture in the University of Rome. At that period of his life he travelled in Brazil and in Spain. In 1890 he succeeded his father Giovanni, who died in 1891, as a professor of architecture. Ernesto Basile died on 26 August 1932 in Palermo. Career After graduation Basile to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Stille
Alexander Stille (born January 1, 1957, in New York City) is an American author and journalist. Early life and education He is the son of Elizabeth and Michael U. Stille. Michael was a Russian-born journalist who was the longtime American correspondent for and later chief editor of Milan's Corriere della Sera newspaper. Alexander graduated from Yale and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Career Works Stille has written several books and numerous articles about Italy's history, culture, and politics, and the legacy of the Mafia. His writing has appeared in publications including the ''New York Times'', ''La Repubblica'', ''The New Yorker'', ''The New York Review of Books'', '' The New York Times Magazine'', the '' Atlantic Monthly'', ''The New Republic'', '' The Correspondent'', '' U.S. News & World Report'', ''The Boston Globe'', and the '' Toronto Globe and Mail''. Stille's first book, ''Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Unde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaia Servadio
Gaia Cecilia Metella Servadio (13 September 1938 – 20 August 2021) was an Italian writer. Early life and career Servadio was born in Padua, the daughter of industrial chemist Luxardo Servadio and wife Bianca Prinzi. Her father was Jewish and her mother was Sicilian and Catholic. She received a bachelor's degree from London's Camberwell School of Art. Her first novel ''Tanto gentile e tanto onesta'', aka ''Melinda'', was published in 1967 by Feltrinelli in Italy and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK, and was "a runaway success". Personal life Servadio was married to the British art historian William Mostyn-Owen c. 1961–1989, and they had three children, Owen (b. 1962), Allegra (b. 1964) and Orlando (b. 1973). In 1968, they were living in "23 rooms or so" of one wing of Aberuchill Castle, Perthshire, Scotland. Their daughter Allegra, an art teacher, was the first wife of the politician Boris Johnson. Their son Orlando is an artist and a painter. Servadio lived in Belgrav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dickie (historian)
Professor John Dickie (born 1963) is a British author, historian and academic who specialises in Italy. Education Born in Dundee, he was brought up in Leicestershire and went to Loughborough Grammar School. He studied Modern Languages at Pembroke College, Oxford, obtaining a Bachelor's degree with first class honours. He continued his studies at the University of Sussex, completing a Master's degree and becoming a Doctor of Philosophy. Career He is Professor of Italian Studies at University College London, where he has taught since 1993. According to the ''American Historical Review'' : John Dickie is a leading member of a group of young historians working in British universities with a distinctive revisionist thrust to their work on modern and contemporary Italian history. They do not shy away from theory, whether historiographical or broadly social scientific, and are happy to challenge past and current monstres sacres, from Denis Mack Smith to Edward Said. Bibliog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Illegal Construction
Illegal construction (also known as illegal building or illegal housing) is construction work (or the result of such) without a valid construction permit. Besides the potential technical hazards on uncontrolled construction sites and in finished buildings, illegal building activity can be a major environmental violation when the works encroach upon preserve areas like nature reserves. Likewise, illegal building can have serious political implications when it is practiced as landgrabbing or for illegal settling in foreign territories (see e.g. International law and Israeli settlements). Illegal building can be the consequence of a combination of urbanization, overpopulation, homelessness and poverty in which case expanding slums, Shanty towns or similar will result. On the other hand, illegal building activity may be due to profitable speculation with and exploitation of valuable real property. Demand for mass tourism accommodation (hotels, etc.) as well as its counterpart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antimafia Commission
The Antimafia Commission () is a bicameral commission of the Italian Parliament, composed of members from the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic. The first commission, formed in 1963, was established as a body of inquiry tasked with investigating the "phenomenon of the icilianMafia". Subsequent commissions expanded their scope to investigate all "organized crime of the Mafia type", which included other major criminal organizations in Italy, such as the Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta, and the Sacra Corona Unita. The Antimafia Commission's goal is to study the phenomenon of organized crime in all its forms and to measure the adequacy of existing anti-crime measures, legislative and administrative, according to their results. The commission has judicial powers in that it may instruct the judicial police to carry out investigations. It can ask for copies of court proceedings, and is entitled to request any form of collaboration that it deems necessary. Those who provide t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Gioia
Giovanni Gioia (16 January 1925 – 27 November 1981) was an Italian politician. Biography Giovanni Gioia was grandson of the industrialist Filippo Pecoraino and had kinship relationships with Tagliavia shipowners. Gioia was one of the most influential members of Amintore Fanfani's political faction within Christian Democracy in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1954 Gioia was appointed provincial secretary of the Christian Democracy of Palermo and also head of the Party Organization Office, which supervised the membership cards: Gioia inaugurated the so-called "card strategy", which consisted in the distribution of membership cards to relatives, friends and even to the dead, arriving to open 59 Christian Democratic sections only in Palermo. Around the years 1954-1957 the breakdown of the agrarian bloc allowed Gioia to transfer liberal and monarchist exponents (often compromised with the mafia) to the Christian Democrats. The two main lieutenants of Gioia, Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'Ora
''L'Ora'' (English: "The Hour") was a Sicilian Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper published in Palermo. The paper was founded in 1900 and stopped being published in 1992. In the 1950s–1980s the evening paper was known for its investigative reporting about political corruption in Palermo and into the Sicilian Mafia, when the Italian Communist Party took ownership. The Mafia made it a target: a bomb exploded in the press room in 1958, and its journalists Cosimo Cristina and Giovanni Spampinato were murdered in 1960 and 1972, while investigative reporter Mauro De Mauro disappeared without trace in 1970. Foundation and early years The paper was founded on the initiative of the entrepreneurial Florio family from Palermo with interests in shipping, shipbuilding, trade and wine industry, fisheries, mining, metallurgy and ceramics. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta (; 13 July 1928 – 2 April 2000) was a high-ranking Italian mobster and a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He became one of the first of its members to turn informant and explain the inner workings of the organization. Buscetta participated in criminal activity in Italy, the United States and Brazil before being arrested and extradited from Brazil to Italy. He became disillusioned with the Mafia after the murders of several of his family members, and in 1984, decided to cooperate with the authorities. He provided important testimony at the 1986/87 Maxi Trial, the largest anti-Mafia trial in history. After the murder of the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, Buscetta gave further testimony to the Antimafia Commission linking Italian politicians to the Mafia. Buscetta entered the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, Witness Protection Program in the United States, where he remained until his death in 2000. Early life Tommaso Buscetta was born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angelo La Barbera
Angelo La Barbera (; 3 July 1924 – 28 October 1975) was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Together with his brother Salvatore La Barbera he ruled the Mafia family of Palermo Centro. Salvatore La Barbera sat on the first Sicilian Mafia Commission that was set up in 1958 as the capo mandamento, or district head, for Mafia families of Borgo Vecchio, Porta Nuova and Palermo Centro. Gaia Servadio, an English/Italian journalist who wrote a biography on Angelo La Barbera, described him as the symbol of the quick, clever gangster – the new post-war mafioso who in the end became the victim of the many politicians he himself had built. He represented the proletariat who tried to become mafioso, middle class, and ultimately did not succeed.Servadio, ''Mafioso''pp. 182-84/ref> Mafia career Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera were born in the slums of the neighbourhood of Partanna-Mondello in Palermo.Shawcross & Young, ''Men of Honour''p. 57/ref> Their father was an itinerant ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francesco Vassallo
Francesco Vassallo a.k.a. don Ciccolo, don Frankie or King Concrete (born c. 1910) was an Italian entrepreneur that associated with Mafia in the 1950s. His son Giuseppe "Pino" Vassallo was kidnapped in 1971. References Further reading * * Italian businesspeople 1910s births Year of death missing {{Italy-business-bio-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
