- Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, covering around 10,000 square miles. It is an autonomous region of Italy. Its population is around 5.82 million, about 8.5% of the population of Italy.
- The capital is Palermo, which was, in 2015, elected as the European capital of street food by Forbes, and in 2018 was named “the culture capital of Italy”. It is home to the largest Opera house in Italy, the Teatro Massimo, built in 1897. Other towns include Catania, Messina and Vittoria.
- There is an area within the metropolitan area of Palermo called Corleone, which is where the family in Mario Puzo's book and Francis Ford Coppola's film The Godfather came from, and adopted as their surname. You can't do an article on Sicily without mentioning the Mafia, a criminal underground economy particularly associated with the island. It is said by some that the word Mafia originates from the phrase “Morte Alla Francia, Italia Anela” (“Death to the French is Italy’s Cry”) which was the motto of Sicilians fighting the French in 1282. The Italian word "mafioso" means bravado or swagger, while a Sicilian word, mafie refers to some caves on the island where criminals used to hide. It is based around families, and its members often refer to it as "Cosa Nostra" ("our thing").
- The poetic form of the sonnet originated not with Shakespeare, but in Sicily. A poet from the Sicilian school of poetry, Giacoma da Lentini, invented the sonnet in the 13th century.
- The longest river in Sicily is The Salso, which is 89 miles long. The island doesn't have many natural rivers - those it has aren't navigable.
- Sicily once belonged to the Greeks, and it is said that Sicily has more beautiful ancient Greek ruins than Greece itself. The Greeks also deemed that the crater of Mount Etna was the home of cyclops and the god of blacksmiths, Hephaestus. In Greek mythology, there are two sea monsters which guard the passage between Sicily and Calabria. They are called Scylla and Charibdys. A local expression, “between Scylla and Charybdis” is similar in meaning to “between a rock and a hard place.”
- Sicily's flag was adopted in 1282 and features a trinacria (which is the same shape as the triskelion, which is the symbol of the Isle of Man in the British Isles), the head of Medusa and three Wheat ears.
- Sicily is just 1.5 miles from the mainland of Italy. Since 1865 there has been talk of building a bridge between the two, with the most recent proposal in the 21st century being the Strait of Messina Bridge, which, if it ever did get built would be the longest suspension bridge in the world. None of the proposals so far have ever been implemented.
- Surrounded by the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Ionian Sea, Sicily has been of great strategic importance throughout history. As recently as the second world war the invasion of Sicily by the Allies in 1943 (Operation Husky) was a significant turning point for the Allies. Once they'd occupied Sicily the Allies were able to control the Mediterranean sea, force the German soldiers to the North of France, where they would be defeated on the better known Invasion of Normandy, or D-Day.
- Famous people from Sicily include the mathematician Archimedes, fashion designer Domenico Dolce (of Dolce and Gabbana), St Lucy of Syracuse and composer Vincenzo Bellini.
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