Sicilian Cultural Traditions

    SICILIAN FLAG 

The Sicilian flag has faced several changes throughout the centuries, but two elements remained the same: the head of Medusa, the Greek mythological goddess, and the so-called triskelion or trinacria in Italian. The Greeks connected this historical symbol with Sicily during the Magna Grecia period. Indeed, this was the time when they conquered the island and learnt about its triangular shape. The flag was introduced during the Sicilian Vespers revolution against the French domination in the 13th century. 

The color read and yellow were used at the time and are still adopted nowadays, symbolizing the union of Palermo, the capital of the island and Corleone, an essential agricultural center situated in the countryside. In the flag we can also see that Medusa has ears made of wheat. In order to understand their meaning, we must trace back to Greeks’ domination. In this sense, ears represent the prosperity of the Sicilian territory. After a couple of centuries, when Romans conquered Sicily and defeated Greeks, grain ears emphasized its status as “Barn of Rome”. If anyone wants to know more about the Sicilian flag, I suggest you to go the Archeological Museum of Agrigento, where you can find the first triskelion ever traced in Sicily, made of terracotta.

OPERA DEI PUPI 

The Opera dei Pupi is a traditional Sicilian marionette performance. The puppets are different from the other marionettes because of their mechanism, figurative and performing style. As regards the earliest appearance of the Opera dei Pupi, we must trace back to some of the most important French medieval epics, like the Chanson de Geste e the Chanson de Roland. The content of these performances was mainly about chivalry, historical events, dramas, death and vengeance. The characters were always paladins who personified the hopes, struggles, victories and defeats they lived in their own lives.  

The typical scene of the Opera dei Pupi involves the hero, the gentle and honest paladin, and the anti-hero, the devil and cruel one. Most of the performances usually end up with the first defeating the second one, in the most dramatic and emotional way possible. One of the main challenges that this Sicilian tradition had to face, consisted of the arrival of television and cinema, in the early 1950s. Indeed, many of the regular views of the Opera dei Pupi changed their minds and followed the technological improvements of that time.  However, the Opera dei Pupi still attracts several tourists from all over the world, because of its peculiarity and historical backgrounds.