Original subtitles

Welcome to Palermo.

An ancient city.

From all over the world came Phoenicians, Greeks, Byzantines,

Arabians, Normans and Spaniards.

Each found a fatherland.

And each left their mark.

Palermo is still a grand capital.

Even when, as in the past, it was looted, vilified and degraded.

This is the recounting of another rebirth.

Our trip starts from a place symbolizing the city,

the valley of the Gold Conch.

This is the Gold Conch, once a place of fruit bearers,

of all species and varieties, from Arabians to Normans,

until the '50s, when what you now see arrived, after the war.

This place once smelled of orchards and groves, the embodiment of Paradise.

Now it's like this.

Palermo.

The Gold Conch.

A complex system of orchards and citrus groves, irrigated by canals,

using the Arabs sophisticated hydraulic techniques.

An immense garden that touched all who arrived by sea.

Beginning in the '50s, the splendor of the Gold Conch became a conquered land

ripe for speculative construction.

A once fertile plain was buried under 300 million cubic meters of cement

greatly transforming the outskirts of Palermo.

The two zones called "ZEN are one example from many.

This was the agricultural hub of Palermo, where there were country homes

and the estates of wealthy Palermitans. It was an important part of the city, a green part,

but only a small hint remains.

The bountiful groves were bulldozed to make way for homes destined for the poor.

So public housing was built to meet the pressing need during the '70s in Palermo.

So ZEN is a mix of a geographical block,

bound to impose on people's lives,

and a social block.

Not far from the urbanistic mess of the new zones,

Mayor Leoluca Orlando saved Villa Niscemi.

He bought it from the heirs of an aristocratic family now living abroad.

He made it the de facto municipal office,

a symbol of the old Palermo saved from the flood of cement.

And here, we know, cement means mafia.

The mafia saw Palermo and its land as an economic opportunity ripe for exploitation.

A mafia indifferent to Palermo and its history.

Between 1956 and 1962, the mafia had full control

over the regulation and approval of new construction in Palermo.

A city that previously had little building abuse,

suddenly became ripe for it with the passing of a new regulatory plan.

The report accompanying the overall Palermo regulatory plan said,

"We must abolish these shameful buildings of the past.

It referred to convents, palaces, piazzas,!!!!!!

streets in the historic center of Palermo.

When someone objected that it was sacrilege

to destroy the green and eviscerate the historical center,

this learned, wild quote came:

"Haussmann did so in Paris, making the Boulevards."

We're talking about the so called Sack of Palermo.

It all started with the war, the Allied air raids,

2,000 dead, almost half the city reduced to ruins.

The port, palaces, piazzas, gardens...

The heart of Palermo, its historical center, all reduced to rubble.

After the war, demand for homes surged, but instead of rebuilding,

they opted for a new Palermo.

Spacious villas and antique gardens

became empty lots to build on.

Starting in the late '50s, little by little, the mafia took control

of the city and its outskirts.

When I was there in the '50s,

I was a girl, but I enjoyed a Sicily that would vanish.

With the destruction of its coast and historic buildings,

the city lost much of its beauty and integrity.

It was rebuilt quickly and without care.

Private interests prevailed and that was, for me, painful.

It was an open expression of thievery and selfishness.

They built what they wanted and destroyed what they found useless. That was it.

At first, in the '60-'70s, when public housing was being built...

they told the citizens, "Destroy your homes, we'll give you public housing."

When that didn't work the mafia took over and said, "Destroy them, we'll give you public housing."

These people were then moved to the outskirts of Palermo

where there were no services or shops. Families disintegrated and friendships were lost.

So these zones were abandoned.

From then on, tens of thousands of Palermitans

would leave the historic center, its beauty and its piazzas.

In the new outskirts,

no sense of history or beauty, no services...

the mafia would easily impose its full dominion.

We grew up like that in the zones, playing, going to school,

We played soccer in the street, surrounded mostly by asphalt.

There was always construction and building, overseen by the mafia.

In one year there were over 20 homicides in one zone.

I still recall a traumatic episode.

I was going up the steps to my house,

and came upon a quarrel with someone pointing a pistol at another's face.

I jumped up like lightning. I was scared.

When I got home they said, "They shot and maybe killed someone."

Even as children we lived with that fear.

Letizia Battaglia is known around the world for her photos of life in Palermo,

always in black and white.

Her shots recount the trendy Palermitan society

and the spontaneous beauty of street girls.

Letizia Battaglia was a photojournalist who documented the mafia war.

I was present during the years of the Corleonesi,

a crazed and hate-filled mafia clan who took control of Palermo.

These are the years of the Corleonesi.

The mafia from the countryside invaded and devoured Palermo.

Anyone who opposed their power was massacred.

I remember one of the first was a Christian Democrat, Michele Reina.

He was young, new to politics.

I saw him speak at the Town Council. He was good.

And I thought, "It can't get worse."

Not knowing then, one by one,

the best people of this city would fall to those wanting to build a new Palermo.

Clean, honest, good people.

For me, it was like we had a civil war. A war between...

the citizens of this city and those from that land.

Meaning the Corleonesi against those in the institutions

fighting the mafia, because they did resist.

Both individual people and parties struggled against the mafia.

1986 would mark a turning point with the staging of the Maxi Trial.

For the first time, an entire generation of mafiosi

were standing trial.

Finally, the monsters had been caged.

These guards placed out front, always looking in here.

You can't look past them, and...

They were filled with rage and amazement.

Hundreds of characters sitting behind bars...

Rough and violent men: illiterate, base, stricken...

They couldn't believe there was a trial,

that the State wasn't dependent on them.

Inmate Sinagra Vincenzo is entering the cell,

screaming and yelling terrible things.

The president has ordered him to be escorted.

They behaved as if they were living in a nightmare.

A nightmare someone outside of this palace

promised and assured them they wouldn't have to face.

The Maxi Trial lasted nearly two years.

360 condemned, 19 life sentences.

With the Maxi Trial, the law reared its head again.

LIFE SENTENCE FOR BOSS AND HITMAN

But the mafia would do the same.

It would turn into something even more dramatic,

and strike its sworn enemies, the heart of the State:

two judges symbolic in the struggle against the mafia.

...hurling vehicles tens of meters in the air,

it completely destroyed a 400 meter stretch of the highway.

The ambush and explosion happened five minutes before 6:00 pm.

What are you filming?

Filming the mutilated bodies? What's wrong with you?

In the darkest hours of the war against mafia,

they came from far away.

The new Palermitans.

Long live Saint Rosalia!

It was my task as coordinator to get this wagon

from the cathedral to the sea.

Let's close, guys.

I felt a sense of responsibility, like a father leading a family.

With everyone surrounding the wagon, the city of Palermo felt like family. ina Caffette

Though they don't belong to the Christian religion, I feel protected by the Sainthoods.

So, when it was the Feast of Saint Rosalia,

Bengali, Mauritians, Tamils take part...

We can belong to any religion, but we all take part.

Every year since 1625, Palermo celebrates

the triumph of Saint Rosalia, its patron saint.

For newly-immigrated Palermitans, pulling the float is a great honor.

An honor that is now for them, too.

Many people watching us say,

"You're foreign, why are you participating in this festival?

"The patron saint of Palermo is for Palermitans."

But most people understand my devotion for the saint.

When it comes to the festival, all are welcome,

whatever your skin color.

Saint Rosalia reflects the city.

She represents a city free from the plagues of yesterday and today.

This is the very essence of devotion to Saint Rosalia.

Once the float arrived at Quattro Canti, they turned the lights off

and suddenly, artists came from the sky

and showered us in silver dust.

A feeling I'll never forget.

In Palermo, religious syncretism is one of the most surprising facets

of intercultural living.

come from the Hindu religion, but when I arrived in Palermo

I missed my home so I said,

"Prayer is prayer, since there's only one God."

So I pray to the saint and it gives me hope.

There are almost 30,000 immigrants officially registered at Palermo.

But the actual numbers vary, and some say it's more than double.

No one's ever really counted, but one thing is certain:

they repopulated the historic center abandoned by Palermitans

and big aristocratic families.

COD FILLET

I'm a black Palermitan.

After 24 years, what can I say?

Hey, let's do it, I don't have the time.

I used to say, "I'm not sure I can stay in Palermo.

"Leaving my children behind is hard."

But over time I don't know what happened... I felt at home.

Now I really feel at home.

SO, Sole Mio

We're all the same in Palermo. Everyone's mixed.

So why not mix dishes and ingredients

to make to make something representative of both Africa and Palermo?

So I came up with a dish I put pretty much everything into,

ingredients both African and Italian, blending them.

O Sole Mio ♪

I made a multicultural dish.

We rediscovered our identity, our cultural voice.

Palermo is a place where culture is expressed syncretically.

In our architecture, food and language.

It is the result of a series of contaminations,

presences and other cultures, producing our identity.

The new Palermo, a mosaic city,

is nothing but the rediscovery of this land's cultural DNA.

Abandoned monuments and historic palaces reveal how the Norman kings unified

the Greek East, Latin West and Islam.

This was the dawn of Arab-Norman Palermo,

of architecture expressing a theme of universal value,

now recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The Normans were good builders and architects.

And they were intelligent. Rather than destroying the Arab world,

they chose overlap and embrace it.

That, for me, denotes intelligence.

Under the Normans, Princes of Christianity, there were 200 mosques in Palermo,

along with a huge Jewish community, all doing business in the city center.

Many of King Ruggero's laws were written in three languages.

Various documents from the period reveal how the use of different languages

allowed for universal expression and tolerant communities.

Zisa, commissioned by King Guglielmo I,

takes its name from the Arabian "al-aziza," the splendid.

Thus, we should imagine it as an architectural gem

in the center of this great Park of Genoardo, an Earth Paradise,

so of Islamic nature, but built by Norman kings,

who adopted the lifestyle from their predecessors.

STELLA PART SOEM ROSA FLOREM FORMA OECOREM

STELLA PARIT SOLEM ROSA FLOREM FORMA OECOREM FENNICIC

STELLA PART SOLEM ROSA FLOREM FORMA OECOREM

The Palatine Chapel, truly an extraordinary masterpiece,

started in the same way.

They used the stones from an older chapel

but gave them a new meaning.

Many stories of Arab-Norman Palermo come from Arabian writers and travelers,

who speak fondly of Palermo, the one they lost,

and this nostalgia for Palermo is greater than for their land of birth.

For them it was Eden, a Koranic earthly paradise.

Eden still exists in Palermo.

It is the ancient Botanical Garden.

A place again bearing witness to the Palermo of old that, for centuries,

stood as a grand capital.

When it was inaugurated in 1779,

it was the largest botanical garden in Europe.

One of the few oases untouched by the wild urbanization of Palermo.

Together with Palazzo dei Normanni and Teatro Massimo,

Palermo's Botanical Garden is the most visited place in the city.

Really a scientific institution,

it stands as a temple of plants,

a place with extraordinary biodiversity,

formed by thousands of plants from all continents.

I'm sitting under a mangrove.

Mangrove is a generic term indicating a plant whose roots grow above ground,

or above water.

Sometimes their roots grow over and around other plants.

In a sense, the garden begins with the path

between the trees, a natural door to plant paradise.

Bismarckia nobilis, the silver palm of Madagascar.

I got this plant about twelve years ago from another part of the garden.

It was small and thin, struggling to grow.

Sol prepared this area with full sun

and it became a real colossus of this palmetum.

Then, some years later, ladded more samples.

And now this patch of Palermo has a small population, let's say,

of these four fertile fruit and seed bearing trees.

This is a perfect case of acclimatization,

of how land can be adapted.

And of the land of Palermo itself acting as curator of its own garden.

Because he wants to feed the foreigner.

He welcomes what is foreign and turns it into something all his own.

For plants, much like for people, there are no geographical confines, no territories.

This Sicilian land proves it.

Regardless of how well the land is prepared, it has to be maintained.

Carefully adapted to meet evolving needs as determined by nature and biology.

Palermo is like a garden, welcoming and hosting palms, exotic plants and new citizens.

The ancient zone Albergheria, also called Ballarò,

from the name of its most famous market, is like an island in the historic center.

Intercultural synthesis holds the zone together.

4, 3, 2, 1!

And mainly, at Santa Chiara no one will ever...

and stress the word ever, be judged over something external.

So let's have a moment of silence,

in which all, Catholics, Christians, Muslims, Hindus,

can all ask for the ability to overcome prejudice.

The Salesian Oratory of Santa Chiara is mainly a home.

It goes beyond the classic concept of a school,

welcoming youths just for play, training and any activity.

This House of Santa Chiara has remained open to the territory of Albergheria, of the zone.

A welcoming space for care and inclusion,

leading to social integration and overcoming challenging situations.

Giving space to pray also means giving space to liberty,

authenticity, identity...

It leads to a capacity for dialogue and reciprocal knowledge.

They all come here to pray: Senegalese Muslims, Bangladesh Muslims,

Mauritian Hindus.

We have Pentecostal Ghanaians, Nigerians, Ivorian Evangelical Christians.

Along with practicing Catholics we have Tamils from Sri Lanka,

alongside Ivorians and Ghanaians. All are welcome,

but with attention to the fact that religion surely is a practical way towards peace.

There is a place, in the historic center of Palermo,

where even the poorest get to organize themselves,

to survive.

The ancient street market tradition has caught back on.

There are no official rules or regulations:

everyone has the chance to sell and swap what little they have.

This is a market of poverty. The real transactions are with poverty.

This market is very useful to the city, as it acts as a social buffer

for everyone with no other source of income.

My day starts between 3:00 and 4:00 am and ends around 1:00 pm.

We sell what we get. What we can find.

I don't like doing wrong. I like to work honestly.

I do honest work with people who give me things, trash.

This is the only alternative.

Everyone makes sacrifices.

Different souls, like Maghreb, Italian, Romanian, all come together at this market.

It's like a small "happy island" with interaction between people from different countries

sharing this means of exchange and the idea of a market.

I was a Capuchin friar, so a Franciscan friar for seven years.

entered the convent when I was 20

and almost at once my friends, my brother friars,

spoke to me about San Benedetto il Moro.

I decided to paint San Benedetto il Moro because he's black,

a second generation immigrant, in '500, son of Ethiopian slaves.

I thought it was important to tell this city, and all of Italy,

that Palermo's co-patron is a black saint.

His face was the first thing I painted. The face of a contemporary black guy,

with hair from the '60s or '70s.

And they asked me. "Why a black man on a wall in Palermo?"

And I simply answered that he was their co-patron.

And thanks to this natural spiritual sense some have,

they immediately took a step back and tried to understand.

I'm sure it threw them for a loop.

They would say, "A black saint at Palermo we don't even know?"

This made them curious and the questions grew,

so they almost immediately accepted it.

And now it is their blessed saint,

overlooking the piazza where they play soccer. Guys from all over the world play.

At night, there are places that are very intense and solitary.

Just walk through Vucciria and some days you enter a type of infernal disco.

But in other zones, like Kalsa or Ballarò, getting lost in the alleys is fascinating.

The historical center of Palermo is still rich in abandoned buildings.

Some are undergoing a transformation.

Many, like the one we're in now, Palazzo Costantino,

hasn't been occupied in over 70 years.

Palazzo Costantino faces Piazza Vigliena,

E better known as the Quattro Canti of the city.

It is one of the nicest and well known places in Palermo.

An extraordinary crossbreed from 1600,

where the axes of the city meet,

via Maqueda and il Cassaro, now renamed Vittorio Emanuele.

The state of this palace is like that of other dwellings facing the piazza.

A fate shared with many other aristocratic palaces in the city.

The palaces...

some reduced now to skeletons, were among the most admired dwellings of Europe

from when Palermo was the pearl of the Mediterranean.

Every historic building, with its layers of fruit from the centuries,

always holds surprises. Just taking the paper off a wall reveals a lambris

of immeasurable beauty and fully intact.

Or to reduce the area, ceilings are often dropped.

Removing the dropped ceiling reveals a grand arch.

In every palace a surprise, big or small, a Norman double arch,

hidden by some renovation from centuries ago,

can always be rediscovered.

In the '90s Palermo could only be visited in two parts,

meaning Piazza Marina, where you went to see Palazzo Steri,

and Museo Abatellis in via Alloro.

But the rest wasn't there, you couldn't visit it.

Tourists had no map, indicator or information.

As such, the historic center couldn't be enjoyed.

Some of the streets didn't even have lights.

Via Alloro is an extraordinary street, one of the richest,

most important and representative streets, lined with historic dwellings,

in a state of total abandonment.

Palazzo Sambuca is the first great example of Historic Palermo rebirth.

Once an immense pile of ruins,

the property belonged to 27 heirs of a great aristocratic family

which, like many others, abandoned the historic center.

In the late '90s, a group of friends decided to buy it.

They began renovations to return its ancient beauty, and it took six years.

We were all labeled as crazy youths and mad visionaries

for venturing into this project. And we were.

In Palermo we are experiencing a phenomena in its earliest stage,

extraordinary because we only just saw it.

The city is starting to reclaim its heritage.

And there are many Palermitans who are coming back from abroad,

seeing Palermo as a city worthy of their time and energy.

The choice isn't just about inhabiting, but about culture.

It's like participating in the rebirth of a city,

and it's not just for Palermitans', it's a heritage for everyone.

This is the right place at the right time

and is surrounded by the most extraordinary potential,

because there is more listening, humanity and availability.

Whereas now in many of the great capitals

there is a reduction and resetting of everything.

Palermo is the right place.

Massimo Valsecchi says so. He is an important collector of Milanese art,

and in 2016 he bought Palazzo Butera,

saving it from the sad state of degradation in which it found itself.

With its 8,000 square meters of salons and staircases and 1,000 terraces,

this palace is a sort of Versailles, still dominating the sea front.

Valsecchi transformed Palazzo Butera

from aristocratic dwelling to cultural and museum workshop.

A center for artistic exchange for both citizens and institutions.

A new way to use art as a project for social innovation.

So a future project based on history, on culture.

So Palermo is again celebrated as one of Italy's cultural capitals.

Its antique palaces, still largely abandoned,

are filled with installations and works of art expressly conceived for these spaces.

Contemporary art becomes the catalyst for Palermo's rebirth.

This is a moment of great vivacity for the city,

in fact many artists not only of contemporary art, but also directors,

have in these years been moving to Palermo,

though continuing their activities internationally.

The purpose of culture is to repossess places intelligently,

to inspire creativity as well as work.

I think this is how to interpret this historic phase of Palermo.

We're in via Notarbartolo,

one of the best known streets in the city residential zones.

Behind me you see a tree, which isn't just any tree.

This is the Falcone Tree.

Here, as in all cultures around the world, there are holy trees.

This plant monument behind me is a holy tree for us Palermitans.

It has been specially enchanted. It produces slips instead of leaves.

They are photos, tickets, letters, drawings

left by Palermitans on the tree growing in front of Giovanni Falcone's home.

A memorial to him, his wife and the agents lost

in the Capaci massacre, during the darkest days of the mafia war.

But in Palermo, what happened to the mafia?

Someone presumptuous enough to say the mafia was destroyed or doesn't exist...

This is heresy, at the least. For me, it's blasphemy.

The mafia lives with progress, with the attempt at progress.

It lives with it, it got sly. It doesn't kill.

The mafia no longer wants to scandalize the world, it wants to do its thing.

The mafia e exists.

But it does so because of an attitude that preys on children, on young men...

The idea of omerta, of tough love, ignorance, it leads to violence.

The mafia exists in Palermo. As they do in Hamburg.

They're in Paris and Palermo.

Also in Milan and Palermo. But the mafia doesn't govern Palermo.

And that is the biggest difference from the past.

I'm moved to see there is hope amid the ruins.

Now they set up stands to make money, OK, but 20 years ago there were no stands.

They made their money differently.

Here it is important to see how they are activating themselves.

You don't understand what it means to see the pavement of Palermo covered in stands.

We used to envy Paris and other cities.

No more. Palermo is better than Paris.