Sicily

 

Sicily, Italian Sicilia, island, southern Italy, the foremost important and one among the most densely populated islands within the Mediterranean . along side the Egadi, Lipari, Pelagie, and Panteleria islands, Sicily forms an autonomous region of Italy. It lies about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Tunisia (northern Africa). The island is separated from the mainland by the Strait of Messina (2 miles [3 km] wide within the north and 10 miles [16 km] wide within the South). The capital is Palermo.

Sicily was inhabited 10,000 years ago. Its strategic location at the centre of the Mediterranean has made the island a crossroads of history, a pawn of conquest and empire, and a melting pot for a dozen or more ethnic groups whose warriors or merchants sought its shores. At the approaching of the Greeks, three peoples occupied Sicily: within the east the Siculi, or Sicels, who gave their name to the island but were reputed to be latecomers from Italy; to the west of the Gelas River, the Sicani; and within the extreme west the Elymians, nation to whom a Trojan origin was assigned, with their chief centres at Segesta and at Eryx (Erice). The Siculi spoke an Indo-European language; there are not any remains of the languages of the opposite peoples. there have been also Phoenician settlements on the island. The Greeks settled Sicilian towns between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. The mountainous centre remained within the hands of Siculi and Sicani, who were increasingly Hellenized in ideas and material culture

In the 3rd century BCE the island became the primary Roman province. The Byzantine general Belisarius occupied Sicily in 535 CE, at the beginning of hostilities with the Ostrogoths in Italy, and after a brief time Sicily came under Byzantine rule. In 965 the island fell to Arab conquest from North Africa , in 1060 to Normans, who progressively Latinized the island. within the 12th and 13th centuries the island formed a neighborhood of the dominion of the 2 Sicilies (or Naples), and within the 18th century Sicily was ruled by the Bourbons. During the 19th century the island was a serious centre of revolutionary movements: in 1860, as a results of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s revolt, it had been liberated from the Bourbons and within the following year was incorporated into the uk of Italy. In 1947 Sicily gained regional autonomy