Original subtitles

- Buongiornio. Come sta? - Va bene. - Posso? - Si! - Grazie.

It's lunchtime here in Palermo.

What could be more Italian than to have a bowl of pasta?

And so the story goes, Marco Polo, that great Italian adventurer,

brought pasta back from China.

- Tante grazie. - Grazie.

But here in Sicily, we have an account

from a century before Marco Polo by the Arab geographer Al-Idrisi

of a town just down the coast from here, the town of Trabia,

where they were making what he called itriyya,

long, dried pieces of semolina -

effectively tagliatelle.

So it seems that pasta was actually introduced to Sicily by the Arabs.

From there, it quickly became the nation's favourite dish.

Sicily has always been on the border of two worlds,

as much North African as it is European.

From the ancient Greeks to modern migrants,

the island's life and character have been shaped

by an ever-shifting tide of humanity.

Some have come to loot and conquer, others to build a new life,

but all have left their mark on the Sicilian soul.

Is it too late to run away?

I'm Michael Scott.

As an ancient historian, I'm on a journey to discover how Sicilians,

so rarely in control of their own destiny,

have forged an identity and culture that is...

well, so Sicilian.

We live on a volcano but it's normal!

Yes.

How they've learnt to face the future from a turbulent past.

I want to know what Sicily's history and people can tell us

about how to survive in our fast-changing world.

We are giving an example to the rest of Europe.

Welcome is the best guarantee for safety.

Barely 100 miles from Africa,

Sicily has long been a Mediterranean stepping stone.

Since the start of the eighth century, Muslim Arabs had ruled

the North African coast - just a day's sailing away.

Mazara del Vallo today is a thriving cosmopolitan town.

There's large Tunisian community here, who work on the fishing boats,

for example. But it was also the place

where the Arabs first came ashore in Sicily in the ninth century,

in 827, upon the invitation of a rebellious Byzantine governor

who'd got himself involved with a nun.

It's a long story, but so was their gradual occupation of the island,

for it took the Arabs over 50 years to conquer this place.

Palermo became Sicily's new capital and, as the island opened up,

immigrants flooded in, fleeing famine and unrest in North Africa.

Under the Arabs, Christians and Jews had less civil rights than Muslims

but they weren't forced to convert.

Within a generation, the island had become

one of the most multiethnic states in the whole of Europe.

These things I saw on the plane over here.

A lovely Sicilian lady was sitting next to me

and she had one in her bag on the plane.

I've no idea what it is but it looks great!

With strong links to the rest of the Arab world, Sicily became

one of the great trading centres of the Mediterranean.

This is my kind of fish stall.

You get to look the fish in the eye before you eat it.

Fantastic!

Welcome to the Ballaro markets here in Palermo.

They've been here for a thousand years,

dating back to the time of the Arab conquest that brought with it

so much that we utterly take for granted here today -

pistachios, almond, saffron, couscous, watermelon, sugar cane.

And also systems of irrigation and agriculture

that absolutely revitalised the western half of Sicily.

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

And here in Palermo, the Arab city that was created with

beautiful gardens and mosques and palaces and bazaars like this one,

Arabs welcomed Christians, Jews, to trade here.

It was absolutely the cosmopolitan melting pot

of the ninth, tenth and 11th centuries.

'Most Sicilians are proud of their Arab heritage,

'but only a few material traces of those years have survived.'

This should keep us going for a while.

HE SHOUTS IN ITALIAN

We've come to high ground on the outskirts of central Palermo

in search of some remnants from the era of the Arab control

and conquest of Sicily. And I'm told that, right here,

there's an entrance to an underground world.

Ciao! Buongiorno!

- Come va? - Ciao. - Piacere. - Piacere.

Possibly a little tight for me on the shoulder.

We're not going with electric battery lights here.

We're going old-school. We're going with gas-powered lighting.

This is amazing! HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

OK.

I'm like a large candle!

HE CHUCKLES

Eight metres down lies a hidden network of tunnels, the qanats,

a gravity-fed irrigation system that carried water from the hills above

into Palermo and to the fields beyond.

Obviously, if the water's hidden down here,

it can't be contaminated by human hand or nature's hand so easily.

But also because, down here, even with the hot weather,

it doesn't evaporate.

Genius!

But, also, what we are seeing here is a system that's designed

not just for bringing water for people to drink

but water that can be used for irrigation, for crops.

And it's that that really allowed Palermo to expand massively.

So they distinguished

between the water in these pipes, which was for drinking,

and the water on the floor of the qanat, that was for irrigation.

So this...

This was the really good drinking water.

No? OK.

Palermo was one of the only cities on Sicily that had this system

of qanats constructed, because it was a city of something like 200,000 people,

possibly the tenth-biggest city in Europe at the time,

and it needed a lot of water to be able to keep the people happy each day.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

Here, we've got an access point between different levels of the qanat.

Rosanna's saying, "Go down and have a look."

OK. So, here we go, then.

HE GROANS

This feels a much more constructed tunnel.

You've got this man-made vaulted roof,

very smart-looking roof, on both sides.

Look at the clarity of this water!

Absolutely unbelievable.

Coming from that direction, from the mountains,

heading in towards the city.

Absolutely superb craftsmanship.

You don't have to, though, go to such extraordinary lengths

to see the remnants of the Arab period in Sicilian history.

Here, Palermo Cathedral, this column has an inscription from the Koran,

and it ends with saying,

"Unquestionably, his is the creation and the command.

"Blessed is Allah, Lord of the world."

Now, this pillar comes from the Arabic mosque that was on this site,

before which there had been a Byzantine church,

and now stands Palermo Cathedral.

And this column has been part of this building

for approaching almost a thousand years. And as such,

it speaks to Sicily's pride

and the confluence of cultures that has defined its history.

That mix of cultures was about to get even more diverse.

Gathering in southern Italy, across the narrow Straits of Messina,

was a group of adventurers only recently arrived from Normandy.

In the early 11th century,

a Norman band of brothers led by the De Hauteville family

came down to southern Italy as mercenary soldiers, and by 1040

they were the most powerful force in the area.

It wasn't long before they started looking with avid eyes towards Sicily.

Two of the De Hautevilles -

Robert and the youngest of the brothers, Roger -

led the invasion force.

In 1061, the same decade that the Normans would also invade England,

Robert and Roger crossed the straits between Italy and Sicily

to take the town of Messina.

But, unlike William the Conqueror's quick conquest of England,

it would take Robert and Roger 30 years

to get Sicily properly under control.

One of the reasons it took so long was

Robert had to keep going back to sort out southern Italy

and Roger took, unlike William the Conqueror in England,

a much more softly, softly approach to conquest.

He worked WITH the local Arabs.

Indeed, many joined his own forces.

And it was from places like this, the Castle of Venus,

that the Normans established their control of Sicily.

Roger became the de-facto ruler of this island and his reputation went

through the roof. He is described as being tall and eloquent and handsome

and diplomatic and a great warrior and a scholar and, frankly...

it makes you quite sick.

Sponsored by the Pope, the Norman invasion of Sicily

had been a Christian enterprise -

yet Normans, Greeks, Jews and Arabs were now granted equal rights,

free to practise their own religions and cultures.

When Roger died, power passed to his son.

Named after his father,

Roger II had grown up surrounded by different cultures and religions

and was determined to build on his father's legacy.

Roger I had been a Norman count.

Roger II had himself crowned as the first king of Sicily.

Situated here, at the heart of the Norman Palace in Palermo,

is this room, the Palatine Chapel,

commissioned by Roger II and inaugurated in 1143.

It really feels like the entire world has been sucked into this one room

and, as a result, created a sensorial overload.

On the one hand, Norman architecture,

Italian marbles on the floor and the lower walls,

but we're also surrounded by these shining Byzantine gold mosaics

and, above our heads, a beautiful Islamic wood-carved ceiling.

What makes this chapel so remarkable is that,

at the time it was being constructed,

Europe was still dealing with the aftereffects of the great schism

between the Western and Eastern Christian churches,

and Europe was at war with the Islamic world - the Crusades.

And yet, here in Sicily,

in a place that had seen all of those influences come and go,

this chapel brings all of them harmoniously together.

Roger II was king of the third-largest kingdom in Europe

at the time. And when he sat here in his chapel,

he must truly have felt that he sat at the confluence of civilisation.

Sicilians look back on the Norman period as a moment in time

when Sicily got it absolutely right -

memories that they keep alive in a uniquely Sicilian way,

in the puppet theatre.

I've come to the Borgo Vecchio district of Palermo

to meet Enzo Mancuso, whose family have been making puppets

and putting on puppet shows for three generations.

Enzo?

- Ciao! Come va? - Molto bene.

Puppet theatre became popular in the 18th century

but its origins are much older -

the traditions and stories handed down from father to son.

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

True puppeteers don't just operate the puppets -

they make them as well.

In a world before television,

puppet shows were the soap operas of their day -

a mishmash of history, tales of Sicilian love and honour,

treachery and justice.

APPLAUSE

When you think of puppet shows, you think of Punch and Judy,

but this is so much more - this is stories of legend,

of myth and of history all wrapped up together in some of the most

realistic and, frankly, bloodthirsty puppeteering I've ever seen.

When Norman rule ended in Sicily,

power passed to a man called Frederick II.

Now, this guy acquired royal titles like most of us acquire hats.

He was the King of Sicily, he was the King of the Germans,

he was the King of Romans, he was the Holy Roman Emperor,

he was even the King of Jerusalem.

But, for me, the most interesting thing about this guy

is that he employed a wandering Scottish intellectual as his adviser

and his name was, if you can believe it, Michael Scott.

It was a very solid choice, I think you'll agree.

Now, this guy was a well-known translator of Greek,

Latin and Arabic texts and he and Frederick became firm friends.

Ciao! Come va?

And if I was THAT Michael Scott, I would have advised Frederick this -

that while everything seems rosy in Sicily right now,

there may be trouble ahead.

Because, while Sicily had been a kind of single entity

with its own royal household,

now it was part of a much bigger geopolitical game - one that would,

as so often in history, see Sicily on the losing side.

Fai attenzione, eh? Ciao!

I've come to take part in a native Sicilian sport -

stick fighting, bastone.

On the death of Frederick II, Sicily fell into chaos and confusion.

It was a time when Sicilians needed to defend themselves

and their possessions.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

- Io voglio provarlo. Lei puo mi insegnare un po? - Si, si, si. - Bravo!

OK. So, we're going to have a try of this

and Giovanni is very kindly going to teach me a few moves.

Stop!

Mano destra.

'For many years, techniques of knife and stick fighting were taught

'only in secret, but now they are practised for sport,

'Sicily's very own martial art.'

Wow!

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

'I used to fence for many years and I can see lots of similarities

'but also key differences.

'And, partly, I think it's to do with where this sport originated,

'from shepherds with their staffs protecting their flocks,

'both from wild animals as well as from people coming to steal from them.'

I like the fact we're starting with going for the face.

- It sounds pretty brutal! - OK.

OK, so now we're going not just for the face, but for the body.

This is the full-on attack, which I have to defend, from Giovanni.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

He's going to be gentle on me, to begin with at least. OK.

Uno, due, tre,

quattro, cinque, sei.

Uno, due, tre,

quattro, cinque, sei.

Fantastico!

From the Middle Ages on, Sicily would belong to foreign powers -

no longer in charge of its own destiny -

but Sicilians are nothing if not adaptable.

In 1282, 500 years of Spanish rule began

and when Spain discovered the Americas,

ideas and products from the New World began to arrive on the island.

And in the town of Modica in southern Sicily,

they were blended into a very Sicilian confection.

Wow! So this is the chocolate?

This is OUR chocolate.

Modican chocolate has been made the same way for the last 500 years -

worked cold so it never becomes completely liquid.

You can hear the granules in the chocolate as...

Yes. The texture is very grainy,

because the sugar never melts at the temperatures.

How long has this recipe been made here in Modica?

We often say that this was chocolate before chocolate,

because Modica was a Spanish county.

So during the Spanish domination,

Spanish people brought this kind of working.

I mean, I love the idea that the cocoa is coming from the Americas to Sicily.

You're mixing it with sugar here in Sicily,

another import to Sicily, to creating special Modican chocolate,

but then you're adding spices from all the different places and peoples

that have come to Sicily and been part of Sicilian history.

So this chocolate mix is a kind of metaphor for what Sicily is.

It is our philosophy of production.

In everything we do, we mix all kinds of cultures

that visited Sicily and then met together in Sicily

and together could go out of Sicily.

So only this particular melting pot of influences and ideas give us

- something that there is nowhere else in the world? - Sure, sure.

'Spanish rule brought New World influences to Sicily,

'but it also delivered one of the Old World's greatest horrors.'

This is a Moreton Bay fig tree, originally from Australia.

The seeds take host in another tree, then grow these enormous roots down

towards the ground and then strangle their host.

And it's a very appropriate tree to be growing here in this square,

which today looks very calm and peaceful and pleasant,

but this was the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition,

just over there in the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri.

Up until this point, Sicily had been a place of multi-faith toleration,

but that was to be no more.

The Spanish Inquisition was formed in 1478

and in 1492, the rulers of Spain

issued a new law banning all Jews from Spanish territories,

and that included Sicily.

This was a real problem for Sicily.

In some towns, 10% of the population were Jews.

They were doctors, weavers, metalworkers,

and many people from Sicily demanded that they be allowed to stay,

but the rule was enforced in 1492 and 1501.

The work then for the Spanish Inquisition here in Sicily

was to focus on those who had supposedly converted to Christianity

and to root out those who were not proper Christians.

In the honeycomb of former cells in the basement of the Palazzo

are layers of graffiti left by the prisoners

as they awaited torture at the hands of the Inquisitors.

For around 300 years, the Spanish Inquisition was active in Sicily,

seeking out heretics,

those who communed with the devil and those who read forbidden books.

It was a terrifying time.

Even information given under religious confession could be used

by the Spanish Inquisition in their trials,

as well as information gained under torture.

If found guilty, people could be sentenced as galley rowers -

effectively a death sentence.

They could be incarcerated in prison,

they could be sent into exile

or they could be executed and burned at the stake.

Here behind me, the prisoners have drawn the symbol

of the Spanish Inquisition, this crescent-shaped dragon

with sharp teeth and eyes.

It's either spewing out of its mouth or about to eat

a key set of biblical figures who are all on their knees.

There's Adam, Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph.

The walls are covered in drawings and in text.

What strikes you very quickly is that they're not complaints

about the terrible conditions,

they're not cries out from individuals' personal lives.

Instead, they are statements of faith.

On one hand, that's kind of ironic, that people who are here,

incarcerated for not being proper Christians,

are scribbling on the walls professions of Christian faith.

But, on the other hand, it tends to make me think that these people

saw themselves as suffering the same kinds of injustice

as Jesus Christ had done.

They were, as Christians, following, somehow, in his footsteps.

This scene, obviously, is well known.

This is Jesus being forced to carry his cross

on the way to his crucifixion.

But check out the Roman soldiers - these guys, by their dress,

by their hats, are clearly not Romans. These are the Spanish.

And so it's another image in which the line is blurred between

the poor people who were incarcerated here

by the Spanish Inquisition and the trials and tribulations they were going through,

and the trials and tribulations that Jesus Christ had suffered.

When the Inquisition ended in 1783,

the inquisitors burned all records of their deeds.

The prisoners' graffiti is all that Sicily has left to tell the tale.

While some Sicilians were being condemned to death by the Spanish Inquisition,

another Christian community was revelling in the preservation

and display of their dead.

These are the Capuchin catacombs, in Palermo,

but the bodies around me are no ordinary corpses.

They are, in fact, mummified bodies.

The practice began at the end of the 16th century,

when the Capuchin monks were expanding their cemetery,

and they found that the original monks, buried here before,

their bodies had been naturally mummified.

They thought it was an act of God

and, as a result, did not rebury these friars,

but actually put them on display as relics

and continued the practice.

And, as a result, down here today,

there are well over 1,000 mummified corpses...

staring at you.

Palermo has the perfect climate for mummification.

Low humidity, combined with the cooler air

and porous limestone of the crypt,

helping to dry out, rather than rot the bodies.

We are standing in the engine room of the mummification process.

They would bring the body in here,

they would open it up, take out all the internal organs,

and stuff the body with straw.

Then they would leave it for up to a year on these terracotta cylinders,

so that any remaining fluids could drain away.

Then they would dress the body in a set of clothes

that the person had chosen before their death,

and then they would take it out

to be hung up in one of the passageways outside.

As a result, the smell - well, I'll leave it to your imagination.

Soon enough, it was not just the Capuchin monks who wanted to be mummified,

but people of each gender, every age and profession.

As a result, there are corridors here of men, corridors of women,

corridors of professionals, chapels of young virgins,

chapels of children, and here, the corridor of families.

And it was here in this corridor

that the very last mummified body was placed in 1920.

This is Rosalia.

She was two years old when she died.

And although the catacombs had technically been closed

for 100 years or more at this time,

her father, a very important Sicilian,

managed to persuade the authorities to allow her body to be mummified

and placed down here.

And due to the almost perfect state of her preservation,

she's known today as the Sleeping Beauty Of Palermo.

Little Rosalia was almost certainly named after Palermo's much-loved patron saint,

who it is said delivered the city from plague.

THEY RECITE IN UNISON

In the 12th century, a Norman woman called Rosalia left the city

and headed up into the mountains for a life of prayer and meditation.

She died in the mountains, in a cave.

And then, in the 17th century, plague hit Palermo.

Just two years, 1624 to 1626,

something like 25% of the population died.

The city sought some kind help.

HE RECITES

It was during that time that one man was given a vision

to search for the bones of Rosalia.

He found them, brought them back to Palermo...

- Buona sera! - Buona sera!

..he brought them back to Palermo.

Where they were given proper honours and processed through the city.

And as a result, it seems the plague was lifted,

and so Rosalia was made the patron saint of Palermo.

THE CROWD SING IN UNISON

Every year on the night of the third of September,

people start to process from the centre of the city

to walk up the mountain -

it's quite a long walk -

To the cave where she died, which is now a church.

For some, they will make this climb not only in prayer,

perhaps even barefoot.

It's been said that some do it on their knees.

For others, it's not just a religious occasion,

it's also a social and a cultural one.

A moment for people from Palermo to take a step back from their normal lives,

and have a moment to think.

To spend time with friends, with family.

To have a tradition that brings them together every year.

Climbing in the name of religion, as I was soon to find out,

seems to be something of a Sicilian past time.

I'm reliably informed that we've come up something like 250 steps.

And the reason we've made it all the way up here

is to see this.

One of the best examples of Sicilian baroque architecture.

Italians are no strangers to earthquakes,

but on the 11th of January 1693,

Sicily was struck by one of the worst earthquakes

in the whole of Italian history.

Tens of towns were devastated.

Something like 60,000 people were killed.

If one were to look for some kind of silver lining from this disaster,

it would be the fact that the Sicilians responded

with a desire to rebuild some of those towns in greater form than ever before.

The result was, amongst other things, this.

The Church of San Giorgio, here in Modica.

It's a prime example of Sicilian baroque,

the style that flourished in this period.

It's flamboyant, it's exaggerated, it's over the top,

it's full of gaiety and life.

In some ways, in direct contrast and competition

with the devastation and disaster

that had preceded it in towns like this.

WHISTLE BLOWS

- Ciao, come va? Tutto bene? Posso ave' una granita? - Si.

- Faccio la migliore granita! - Bravo, la migliore granita!

WHISTLE BLOWS

The Arabs named the port town of Marsala in western Sicily.

It was the Marsa, the port, of Allah.

But it's a name that also recalls a strong relationship

between Sicily and Britain.

- Grazie tante. - Prego.

Marsala wine, that's how we know this place.

Indeed, Marsala wine was invented by an Englishman, a Yorkshireman,

John Woodhouse, in the 18th century,

who came here to Marsala and made this fabulous creation.

And lots of famous people have contributed names to different Marsala wines over time.

Lord Nelson, who also was in Sicily in the late 18th century

while he was having his long-standing affair with Lady Hamilton,

named a Marsala wine.

And then, of course, another was named after Garibaldi -

that hero in Italian unification.

And, in fact, I'm standing outside the Porta Garibaldi -

the Garibaldi gate of Marsala.

Because it was in Marsala that Garibaldi first landed in Sicily

when he was to begin his quest.

And on the day he landed,

there were two British frigates also in the bay.

And it's said that the presence of those British ships

stopped the Spanish Bourbons from obliterating Garibaldi in his tracks

before he'd even begun.

Cheers!

Garibaldi's conquest of Sicily brought him to Palermo.

In May 1860,

Sicily emerged from centuries of slumbering in the shadows

to once again become the centre of the world's attention.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, leading a force of a little over 1,000 men,

took the city of Palermo and freed Sicily from the Spanish Bourbons.

And in so doing, began the process of the unification of Italy.

News of Garibaldi's achievements spread across Russia, America,

and, of course, London,

where they were even fundraising for him.

Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale contributed to the cause.

And in the ultimate accolade,

Garibaldi had a biscuit named after him -

the Garibaldi biscuit.

In October 1860,

Sicily was given a chance to vote on whether it wanted to become part of a unified Italy.

And 99.5% of the voting population voted "yes".

And this building is the result -

the opera house of Palermo,

built to put Palermo on the map.

It's the largest opera house in Italy, the third-largest in Europe,

and every part of its construction was supposed to hit the high notes of Sicilian history.

From the Greek columns on the exterior,

to the stage curtain, which had an image of the coronation of King Roger II

from 12th century.

With this building, in this building,

the people of Palermo could feel they were truly on the world stage.

No longer would Sicily be ruled from afar.

The greatest threat now would come from within.

In the ancient Greek theatre at Taormina,

the opera Cavalleria Rusticana.

First performed in 1890, it was an instant hit.

Telling a tale of jealousy, pride and vengeance

in a small Sicilian town.

When the young soldier, Turiddu, accepts a duel with the cart dealer, Alfio, by biting his ear...

..one of them must die.

These were men of honour.

In the opera's rehearsal room I met director Bruno Torrisi,

and actor Filadelfo Paone.

Among the opera's biggest fans were the Sicilian Mafia.

Born in the aftermath of Garibaldi's liberation,

they ran protection rackets in the lemon groves around Palermo.

Now their violence could be explained away

as nothing more than Sicily's primitive code of honour -

a myth that they would carry with them into the modern world.

By the early 1980s,

the Sicilian Mafia had grown more bloodthirsty than ever before.

In the space of two years, at least 1,000 murders.

Magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino led the fight back.

Until, in 1992,

when a massive explosion ripped apart the motorway into Palermo,

killing Falcone, his wife, and three police officers.

Less than two months later,

Borsellino and five policeman died in a car bomb.

The public outcry led to the arrest of Salvatore Riina,

the Mafia boss who'd ordered the assassinations.

He was convicted of over 100 counts of murder.

Riina's family left Palermo

and returned to their hometown of Corleone.

Before long Riina's teenage son, Giovanni,

was throwing his weight around.

In 1995, Emiliano was 13 years old

when he went to visit his cousin in his aunt's clothes shop in Corleone.

They were among the town's young men and women

who'd refused to bow down to Mafia intimidation.

Emiliano's cousin had been murdered

by Giovanni Riina and fellow mafiosi.

Less than a month later his female cousin, Giuseppe's sister,

was driving with her family when the Mafia struck again.

The young Riina was arrested,

but the threat remained.

'The 1990s marked a turning point in Sicilian attitudes to the Mafia,'

a shift that could be traced to the very spot we were standing,

from where the bomb that killed the magistrate Falcone on the motorway

below us was detonated.

The Mafia is still present in Sicily,

though less violent than before.

But, for many, this land will always be linked with the ultimate

Mafia movie, The Godfather.

I retraced Al Pacino's footsteps to a famous scene in the Bar Vitelli,

filmed not in Corleone, where the Mafia demanded the pizzo,

the protection money,

but in the eastern hill town of Savoca.

The bar, set up by their great aunt,

is now being run by Giulio and Dario Motta.

We've been here for a little while,

and we've seen hundreds of people come to see the place.

- Yes. - Where it was filmed.

Which you've kept, kind of, unchanged here.

How do you feel that you are running a business

on the basis of a film that made the Mafia so famous?

Does that sit badly, difficult, is there a difficulty for you?

- How do you see it? - No.

No, it's not difficult, because it's a movie.

It's a real situation that isn't a good thing, the Mafia,

but it's a part of the history of the Sicily.

What calls the tourists here is The Godfather.

But what makes them stay here is the sun,

it's the limoncello, it's the granita, it's the coffee.

- Everything! - THEY LAUGH

Granita for breakfast!

The best idea ever.

But I have to ask you, if,

you know, the Mafia is still part of Sicily's story today,

- in different forms than it was in the film. - Yes.

So if tomorrow a Mafia representative came to you here

at Bart Vitelli and said, "It's time to pay the pizzo,"

what would you say?

How would you deal with that?

I think that if someone comes here and asks me pizzo,

I give to him the granita.

And, after, he can go home.

No problem.

And what do you think, I mean, would you agree?

I think...we close the bar.

- We will close the bar. - Rather than pay the pizzo? - Yeah.

Well, let's hope that doesn't happen,

and that Bar Vitelli continues to flourish.

- And I think we need to get a photo of us altogether before we go. - Yes!

I came here and I said,

"Oh, look at those people wanting to wear the hat and sit there, it's so stupid."

- We are here to protect you. No worries. - But now...

It's all I want to do, is stand here with you guys.

This is awesome! THEY LAUGH

The Mayor of Palermo, Leoluca Orlando,

has been a long-term opponent of the Mafia.

So how does he feel Sicilians should face the future?

- To be mafioso was to remain close inside our roots. - Mm-hmm.

Honour, family, friendship, Catholic faith...

And we died.

Because the Mafia killed us.

Finally, the people decide to open the eyes

and not longer go forward as the past,

not seeing, not speaking, not hearing.

So you've argued that the Mafia covered up the true Sicilian character.

But how would you describe that character today?

The Sicilian character is, today, is impossible to define.

Because it's a meeting point.

So I am Sicilian in a completely different way

than the Sicilian that is in front of me.

Because we are all a different combination of identities.

So this different combination of identity

lets us here appear to be the world in the future.

When it will not be possible to close inside roots.

Sicily has understood this necessity to combine roots and wings.

After 3,000 years of conquest and immigration,

Sicilians today are proud of their mixed heritage.

So what can they tell us about how to cope

with one of the greatest challenges of modern times?

I travelled to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa,

just a short distance from the Libyan coast,

on the front line of Europe's migrant crisis.

We've come down to the port, and soon enough a bus is going to arrive

with a large number of migrants who have been saved from the seas

by the Italian coastguard.

And they're going to board the boat to head on to Sicily.

Their journey already to this point has been miraculous in many ways.

Just this year alone, so far,

3,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean seas.

It falls to the coastguard to try and save those lives.

Coming here to Lampedusa and getting out on the sea

gives you an entirely different perspective on what is the largest

migration of people since the Second World War.

There is law of the sea.

Politics doesn't matter.

Nationality doesn't matter.

Race, gender, ethnicity, none of it matters.

If there is somebody in trouble,

you respond.

At coastguard headquarters back on Lampedusa,

I asked the man in local charge of the operation, Comandante Monaco,

if he thought Sicilians saw the migration problem differently

from other Europeans.

In Sicily we have had, in the last two years,

400,000 migrants who arrived in Sicily.

You have not heard, have not read, one single act of intolerance.

One single act of intolerance.

We are giving an example to the rest of Europe.

Welcome is the best guarantee for safety.

When some strange migrant arrives, the migrants call the mayor,

and the mayor speaks with the police.

Because they feel Palermo is their city.

They defend their city in London.

The refugees feel London is their city?

In Paris, the refugees, they call the police, or they close the eyes?

It's fair to say, I think, that the mayors of London, Paris or Brussels

might well say to you,

"How many of those people will want to live in Sicily?

"How many of those people will want to live in the UK?

"It's not going to be a problem for you, it's going to be a problem for us."

What would you say in return?

You can say to people,

"You cannot live here, because we have not enough hospitals.

"Not enough apartments.

"Not enough schools."

But, today, we are in the hands of politicians,

who have not understood that in the stomachs of human beings,

there is no intolerance.

Intolerance is in the... In the... In the...

In the...mind

of some politicians.

If they send the message of fear, the people have fear.

With their message of safety, the people feel safe.

And today, Palermo is exciting and safe.

Sicilians have lived in a world of constant change,

never quite sure what the future may hold.

Back on the slopes of Mount Etna, I met a young winemaker, Chiara Vigo.

Against all the odds, she and her husband, Gianluca,

are bringing new life to her family's vineyard,

despite the fact that Europe's largest active volcano

is on their doorstep.

I think Etna people live in a sort of cataclysm.

We live on a volcano, but it's normal.

Otherwise, we would become crazy, I think.

Can you explain to me, what is that?

That very thick line of ground right there?

Have you... Have you excavated this?

No, this is lava.

This is the eruption in 1981.

That arrived until here.

The lava destroyed two main roads.

And also 20 hectares.

And here, just in front of the vineyard,

decided to change direction.

- Hang on, hang on. So that is volcanic lava? - Yes.

- Can we go and see it? - Yes, of course.

Of course.

It's just so... It's so menacing when you get up close.

I mean, it's what, two and a half times my height?

- Maybe more? - Yeah.

- But, in another place on the lava... - Please, lead the way. Lead the way.

..there is very strange surprise,

because we discovered some vines survived under the lava.

Wow!

- So this is a vine that was covered by the lava in 1981. - Yes.

And then the roots have forced their way through the lava

- to find the light, to find the sun. - Light, sun. - Wow, I mean...

- This is not an easy... - Yeah.

I mean, this is a hard rock, huh?

This is not an easy rock to find your way through. My God.

That's why I feel the responsibility to take care,

because in my life, there were important moments,

like the lava, and after some years my father died here.

So that there are some moments, very, very intense,

that are linked with this place.

And I cannot leave this place.

It's in my blood.

I can completely understand.

- Is this the only vine that survives? - No, no. Not at all.

- There are some others. - There are more? - Yes, there are more.

- With grapes. - With grapes?

Oh, my God.

- Look. - Wow!

What will you call this?

Will you give this wine a particular name?

- The survivor. - The survivor wine! I love it.

This vine was covered by the eruption of Etna back in 1981.

That was the year of my birth.

Ever since then it's been pushing its way back up

to emerge triumphant again.

And... I feel quite silly, actually,

I feel almost kind of moved to tears.

Not by an example of human tenacity,

but by an example of nature's ability to survive.

And...

Wow.

Wow!

That's one impressive plant.

Sicily has, over the centuries,

moved from being an absolute backwater

to being the epicentre of world events, and back again.

And as a result, many people you talk to will talk about the sadness of the Sicilians.

The sadness that comes from being repeatedly conquered

and having events totally out of your own control.

But in this journey I haven't found that.

Instead, I've been overwhelmed by the pride, the joy,

and the excitement that Sicilians feel about their island,

and about their future.

And as Sicily once again becomes the epicentre for the great issues

of the 21st century - globalisation, mass migration -

you feel that this time,

Sicily and the Sicilians might well be ready to show us the way.

And I wish them luck.