Sicily 2

Sicily

Sicily 3
Catania International Airport

By sea, Sicily is served by several ferry routes and cargo ports, and in all major cities, cruise ships dock on a regular basis.

Plans for a bridge linking Sicily to the mainland have been discussed since 1865. Throughout the last decade, plans were developed for a road and rail link to the mainland via what would be the world’s longest suspension bridge, the Strait of Messina Bridge. Planning for the project has experienced several false starts over the past few years. On 6 March 2009, Silvio Berlusconi’s government declared that the construction works for the Messina Bridge will begin on 23 December 2009, and announced a pledge of €1.3 billion as a contribution to the bridge’s total cost, estimated at €6.1 billion. The plan has been criticized by environmental associations and some local Sicilians and Calabrians, concerned with its environmental impact, economical sustainability and even possible infiltrations by organized crime.

Flag of Sicily:

The flag of Sicily shows a triskeles symbol (a figure of three legs arranged in rotational symmetry), and at its center a Gorgoneion (depiction of the head of Medusa) and a pair of wings and three wheat ears.

The flag is characterized by the presence of the triskeles in its middle, the (winged) head of Medusa and three wheat ears, representing the extreme fertility of the land of Sicily, The triskelion symbol is said to represent the three capes (headlands or promontories of the island of Sicily, namely: Pelorus (Peloro, Tip of Faro, Messina: North-East); Pachynus (Passero, Syracuse: South); and Lilybæum (Lilibeo, Cape Boeo, Marsala: West), which form three points of a triangle from the historical three valli of the island.

Sicily 4
Flag of Sicily

The flag is bisected diagonally into regions colored red and yellow, red representing lava, yellow representing wheat.

The Triskeles-with-Gorgoneion symbol is found in antiquity, depicted on coins minted in Syracuse in the 4th century BC. The emblem was included in the design of the Army Gold Medal awarded to British Army majors and above who had taken a key part in the Battle of Maida (1806). It was used in combination with the Italian tricolore in the Sicilian revolution of 1848. It was at this time referred to as “the sign of the Trinacria”, Sicily being referred to by its ancient name, Trinacria (“having three headlands”). The name had been revived during the Aragonese period of the Kingdom of Sicily following the Sicilian Vespers (1282). Apparently from this use, Trinacria came to be re-interpreted as a name for the symbol itself.

The diagonal division in red and yellow goes back to 1943, when it was used by the separatist movement led by Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile.

The addition of a pair of wings to the head of the Gorgon is modern (1848), the three ears of corn were added in the 1940s.

A gonfalon combining the coats of arms of Norman Sicily, the Hohenstaufen emperors and the Aragonese kingdom of Sicily with the triskeles emblem was adopted by the Sicilian Regional Assembly in 1990. The present design became the official public flag of the Autonomous Region of Sicily on 4 January 2000, after the passing of an apposite law which advocates its use on public buildings, schools, city halls, and all the other places in which Sicily is represented.

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