DK Travel : Sicily : History & Culture

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Count Roger

Norman crusader Roger de Hautville (also known as Count Roger or Roger I) took Sicily at the end of the 11th century. He was the first of a century of Norman rulers who slowly changed Sicily from an eastern to a western society, albeit one with exotic flair (see Norman Palermo).
Crops

The Spanish introduced tomatoes, potatoes, chocolate and the cactus Fico d’India ; the Greeks introduced olive trees and grapevines; the Arabs brought citrus fruits, sugar cane, date palms, pistachios, flax, cotton and mulberries.
Demeter

The cult of the Mother Goddess, protectress of agriculture and fertility, is one of the most ancient in Sicily. When her daughter Persephone disappeared, Demeter roamed the Earth searching for her, ignoring crops, and thus allowing the earth to become wrought with famine.
Demeter

All-important goddess of agriculture, the harvest and fertility, Demeter’s cult was based at Enna.
Divorzio all’Italiana

Pietro Germi’s 1961 comedy has Marcello Mastroianni as a Sicilian aristocrat seeking a divorce when divorce in Italy was not legal.
Ducetius

In what was the last resistance effort against the Greeks, Ducetius unified his people, the Sicels of eastern Sicily, in 452 BC. He succeeded in fortifying positions and redistributing land until suffering final defeat at the hands of Syracuse.
Duomo

One of the most spectacular buildings in Sicily, the dramatic Baroque façade fronts a 5th-century BC Doric Temple to Athena. It was transformed into a church in the 7th century AD. Clearly visible inside and out are monolithic Doric columns.
Earthquakes

In 1908 an earthquake killed more than 70,000 people and levelled more than 90 per cent of Messina. The next quake, in 1968, left scores of villages destroyed in the Belice Valley. Thousands were housed in shelters for 15 years, waiting for the Italian government to resolve the problem.
Emigration

After Unification, however, Sicily found itself highly taxed and ignored as an outpost of a “foreign” government. Peasant farmers found themselves unable to feed their families and there was no means for improvement. Such poverty became the motivating factor for mass emigration to the Americas in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Erosion

The Romans began deforestation of the island to export timber and make way for wheat plantations. Sicily is now virtually treeless and the earth is easily washed away in heavy rains.