Sicily Guide

The Italian government was ordered to pay $160,000 to a gay man who received a driver’s license for the disabled after he volunteered information on his sexual orientation to military authorities, the man and a gay-rights group said Monday.
Danilo Giuffrida, 27, said he told officials about his homosexuality when he took a physical after being […]

On a sun-drenched morning last week in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, a bunker-like courtroom in the Ucciardone prison was the scene of a rare challenge to the mafia. Bosses and low-ranking “soldiers” stared fixedly from their steel cages as seven shopkeepers – hidden by shaded glass – identified those who had allegedly collected extortion money […]

Ask a roomful of readers about Lampedusa’s “Leopard” and more often than not you’ll find a few who will put hand to heart and say it’s their favorite book, and a few others who will simply shrug — never heard of it — or ask if it has anything to do with the Visconti movie […]

As an image of local Mediterranean democracy in action, it was hard to beat. Under the deep blue sky of late afternoon, and beneath the solemn gaze of 100 or more local citizens packed into a courtyard shaded by lemon trees, the new mayor and the new town council of the little Sicilian town of […]

Hurtling through hard-core Mafia territory -’Sicily’s chief sheriff, Falcone, was blown up just there,’ our driver says, reassuringly - we’re on a dual carriageway where Italians relish ignoring traffic lights, overtaking rules and most other road laws known to man. ‘Up there is where the Godfather was hiding all along,’ he continues, pointing. This isn’t […]

Enel has deposited the project design for one of the first off-shore wind farms in the Mediterranean Sea. The request for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been delivered by Enel to the Ministry of the Environment and the Region of Sicily.
Italy’s first off-shore wind facility will foresee the installation of 115 large generators with […]

Eni SpA has made “a new, significant” natural gas discovery off the coast of Sicily, the Italian gas and oil company said Tuesday.
The find was made in the Cassiopea 1 field in the Sicilian Strait 22 kilometers (14 miles) off Agrigento. The field is 60-percent owned by Eni and 40-percent by Edison.
Read more at IHT.com

NewsNews

I am not generally a fan of Michelin-starred restaurants.
It’s not that I have a problem with the guide per se, more that satisfying the demands of a guidebook originally designed to tell haute-bourgeoisie French motor-ists where to find Parisian-style fine dining seems to do strange things to chefs, making them complicit in a production-line […]

Italian researchers say a rostrum, used by ancient Romans to ram enemy ships, was found off the coast of Sicily.
The rare bronze appendage may have been used in the final naval battle of the First Punic War, ANSA reported Tuesday. The rostrum was recovered about 230 feet below the surface by divers aided by remotely […]

After 800 days, the restauration works for the Palatine Chapel in Palermo have been completed. now the public can enjoy its view.
The Palatine Chapel is the royal chapel of the Norman kings of Sicily situated on the ground floor at the center of the Palazzo Reale in Palermo. The chapel was commissioned by Roger II […]