Most tourists come to Italy for the wine and vistas, not to mention the pasta and pizza.
Many stay away from the Triangle of Death – the area around Sicily’s capital Palermo that includes the city of Bagheria.
The name dates back to the 1980s, when the Mafia carried out a series of gruesome murders in Bagheria and nearby Casteldaccia and Altavilla Milicia in the north of the island.
Bagheria, a town of about 50,000 people, remains the base of the Sicilian War group, known locally as Cosa Nostra, to this day.
Previously, the town made headlines when Mafiosi brutally tortured and killed their victims, in an abandoned nail factory, and then disintegrated the bodies with hydrochloric acid.
Today, the Mafia is very smart. But even though the bloodshed has subsided, they keep their steel in place.
“Bagheria is still a Mafia town,” said an activist from the anti-Pio La Torre center in Palermo.
The group’s tragic legacy is still very visible, as buildings dot the skyline from the time of the Mafia’s architectural speculation.
“From the mountains to the sea, the city is covered in concrete,” said the activist.
Many businesses still pay the “pizzo,” protection money collected by the Mafia, he says.
The group also has a strong hold on the drug trade in Bagheria, and the town faces a high unemployment rate.
The continuing presence of the Mafia
These influences disrupt what is otherwise a very attractive city.
Bagheria, located just 15 minutes from Palermo, has a beautiful coastline, amazing heritage and local cuisine shaped by the coast.
But Bagheria’s progress has been hampered by the Mafia.
Despite the city’s efforts to curb its influence, asking people to refuse to pay the pizzo and report those who ask for it, or confiscate properties owned by the Mafia, it is still very difficult to remove the deep roots of the organization, said the activist.
He says the Mafia feels at home here.
Once at home Sciliy’s the nobles
Bagheria was founded as a place for the Sicilian nobility from Palermo to spend their summer holidays in villas outside the city.
Royal houses from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Villa Palagonia, Villa Trabia and Villa Valguarnera, where the Italian writer Dacia Maraini grew up, still remember those times.
After World War II, the Mafia began to focus more on real estate speculation, hoping to make a quick buck selling poor concrete buildings.
In the center of Bagheria, the result is the baroque houses next to the desert houses, the charming Villa Palagonia surrounded by multi-storey buildings.
Maraini, a local resident who has moved to Rome, remembers the vista of Villa Valguarnera, which had to give way to concrete bricks. “This vision has now been overshadowed by houses and rental properties built in a purposeless manner, where trees, parks, gardens and old buildings have become their victims,” ​​he said.
The beauty of his hometown has been destroyed in a systematic way due to the deterioration of the building, said Maraini.
There are approximately 2 million illegal buildings in Sicily, a practice called “abusivismo edilizio” – abusive construction – in Italian.
Of every 100 legally built buildings in Sicily, around 48 were built without a permit, statistics chief Istat said recently.
Criminals of today
The way the Mafia operates in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy has changed fundamentally since the 1990s, and Cosa Nostra has lost much of its power, experts say.
As a result, it is now very difficult to see their works. Instead of bloodshed, Mafia officials now focus on financial crime and economic penetration.
In Bagheria, the Mafia was deeply connected to local politics for decades and did business in the fields of architecture and agriculture. That has changed, said activist Pio La Torre.
“Today, the core of their business is drug trafficking and extorting people, which they can do independently,” he said.
In Italy’s major cities, hundreds of thousands take to the streets every year to demonstrate against the Mafia. Elsewhere, anti-Mafia institutions like Pio La Torre and individuals are trying to fight criminals by focusing on youth work, organizing demonstrations or refusing to pay pizzo.
One of them, a businessman from Bagheria, recently found his car burnt in the parking lot.
However, for many, this war has long since ended in resignation.
A survey of Italian students conducted by Pio La Torre revealed that only one in five believed that the Mafia could be defeated.
