Theresa Maggio

Leoluca Orlando last night won his fourth mayoral race with 46 percent of the votes of those already counted, the largest margin in the nation where cities and towns held municipal elections yesterday. He won fame as Sicily's anti-mafia mayor and it is a miracle that he is still alive. He won his last election five years ago with more 70 percent of the vote.
Bad news: Giusi Nicolini, the mayor of Lampedusa who welcomed and aided African migrants, and whose name was bandied about for the Nobel Peace Prize, lost her bid for reelection, coming in third on the European island town closest to Africa. Her successor has said that everything has to change including the presence of NGO rescue volunteers. Read More 

From The Guardian:
Letizia Battaglia, Italy’s most famous female photojournalist, has developed all of her rolls of film but one. Shot in 1987, the photos show the corpse of a 10-year-old boy, Claudio, who had been killed by the mafia in Palermo.

It was a time of war. The Sicilian mafia, known as Cosa Nostra, was leaving bullet-ridden bodies in the streets and assassinating prosecutors with car bombs. Battaglia photographed hundreds of corpses, building a bloody archive in black and white that showed Sicily’s worst face to the world.

Thirty years have passed since Battaglia photographed the boy, killed because he had witnessed a murder, and the world around her has changed. Tourism has regenerated Palermo and brought it back from the depths. Most of the Cosa Nostra bosses are in prison and its killers have stopped shooting up the city. Battaglia has changed too. Now, at 82, she is trying to leave behind the horror of those years and searching for innocence and beauty. Read More 

From The Guardian:

A mafia boss has been gunned down while riding his bicycle in Sicily, in what appeared to have been the sort of mob killing that has become rarer in recent years as dangerous figures have been locked up.

Giuseppe Dainotti, 67, was shot in the head as he cycled along a street in Palermo, almost 25 years to the day since anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone was killed in a bomb blast on a motorway on the Italian island.

Photographs of Monday’s crime scene evoked decades of violence in the Sicilian capital, showing Dainotti’s body covered by a sheet, only his shoes on show, and the white bicycle he was riding lying where it fell. Read More 

From La Repubblica 8 May 2017:

Luigi Duro, a 44-year-old security guard who was laid off from his job, decided to protect the splendid white, flowing "Fountain of Shame" in Piazza Pretoria as an act of civil service and to keep his feeling of having a purpose in life. He started his vigil yesterday morning.
He made himself a little badge with his name on it so he can look more authoritative, he said. "I decided to spend my time working for the common good," he said. " I decided to put my twenty-some years of experience in security to some good, without making any profit from it." Read More 

A minute and a half with Rick Steves in Palermo's markets.

From the Guardian:
Every time a ship with rescued migrants enters the harbour of Palermo, the mayor goes to greet them. “Welcome,” he says to them. “The worst is over. You are citizens of Palermo now.”

Migrants themselves posed for the photographic work of Liu Bolin, the Chinese artist who from today until 17 March exhibits his project at Palermo's Cantieri della Zisa.

Palermo director Franco Maresco interviews Letizia Battaglia, photojournalist who took the most iconic photos of the Mafia wars in Palermo during the 80s.

Palermo will be Italy's culture capital for the year 2018.

Palermo from AlbertoLupo on Vimeo.