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Sicily (Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia), officially the Sicilian Region, is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea and one of the twenty regions of Italy, situated south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe. With over 4.7 million inhabitants, including 1.2 million in and around the capital city of Palermo, it is both the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea.

Sicily's namesake is the Sicels, who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age. Sicily has a rich and unique culture in arts, music, literature, cuisine, and architecture. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,403 m (11,165 ft) high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate. It is separated from Calabria by the Strait of Messina. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is considered part of southern Italy.

The earliest archaeological record of human activity on the island dates to around 14,000 BC. By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and around twelve Greek colonies along its coasts, becoming one of the centers of Magna Graecia. The Sicilian Wars of 580–265 BC were fought between the Carthaginians and Greeks, and the Punic Wars of 264–146 BC were fought between Rome and Carthage. The Roman province of Sicilia ended with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. Sicily was ruled during the Early Middle Ages by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, and the Emirate of Sicily.

The Norman conquest of southern Italy led to the creation of the County of Sicily in 1071, which was succeeded by the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. Following the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, Sicily was ruled by the Crown of Aragon and then the Monarchy of Spain, either in personal union with the crown or by a cadet branch, except for a brief period of Savoy and then Habsburg rule in 1713–1735. In 1816, the kingdom unified with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Following the Expedition of the Thousand, an invasion led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, and a subsequent plebiscite, the island became part of the newly unified Italy in 1860. Sicily was given special status as an autonomous administrative division on 15 May 1946, 18 days before the 1946 Italian institutional referendum.

Etymology

The name Sicilia was given to the Roman province in 241 BC. It is named after the Sicels, who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age. The ancient name of the island is Trinacria (Greek Τρινακρία "having three headlands") for its triangular shape, likely a re-interpretation of earlier (Homeric) Thrinacia. The Greek name was rendered as Trīnācrĭa in classical Latin (Virgil, Ovid).

Prehistory

Humans first colonized Sicily towards the end of the Late Pleistocene, around 16,000 years ago, by people associated with the Epigravettian culture.

Discoveries of dolmens on the island (dating to the second half of the third millennium BC) seem to offer new insights into the culture of primitive Sicily. The impact of at least two influences is clear: the European one coming from the Northwest, and the Mediterranean influence of an eastern heritage.

Antiquity

The original classical-era inhabitants of Sicily comprised three defined groups of the ancient peoples of Italy: the Sicani, the Elymians and the Sicels. The most prominent and by far the earliest of these were the Sicani, who (Thucydides writes) arrived from the Iberian Peninsula (perhaps Catalonia). Some modern scholars, however, suggest classifying the Sicani as possibly an Illyrian tribe. Important historical evidence has been discovered in the form of cave drawings by the Sicani, dated from the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 8000 BC. The Elymians, thought to have come from the area of the Aegean Sea, became the next tribe to join the Sicanians on Sicily.

No evidence survives of warring between tribes, but the Sicanians moved eastwards when the Elymians settled in the northwest corner of the island. The Sicels are thought to have originated in Liguria; they arrived from mainland Italy in 1200 BC and forced the Sicanians to move back across Sicily and to settle in the middle of the island. Other minor Italic groups who settled in Sicily included the Ausones (Aeolian Islands, Milazzo) and the Morgetes of Morgantina.

The Phoenician settlements in the western part of the island predate the arrival of Greek colonists. From about 750 BC, the Greeks began to live in Sicily (Ancient Greek: Σικελία – Sikelia), establishing many significant settlements. The most important colony was in Syracuse; others grew up at Akragas, Selinunte, Gela, Himera and Zancle. The native Sicani and Sicel peoples became absorbed into the Hellenic culture with relative ease, and the area became part of Magna Graecia along with the coasts of the south of the Italian peninsula, which the Greeks had also colonised. Sicily had fertile soils, and the successful introduction of olives and grape vines fostered profitable trading. Greek culture significantly centered around Greek religion, and the settlers built many temples throughout Sicily, including several in the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento.

Politics on the island became intertwined with those of Greece; Syracuse became desired by the Athenians who set out on the Sicilian Expedition (415–413 BC) during the Peloponnesian War. Syracuse gained Sparta and Corinth as allies and, as a result, defeated the Athenian expedition. The victors destroyed the Athenian army and their ships, selling most of the survivors into slavery.

The Greek kingdom of Syracuse controlled most of eastern Sicily while Carthage controlled the western side. The two cultures began to clash, leading to the Greek-Punic wars (between 580 and 265 BC). The Greek states had begun to make peace with the Roman Republic in 205 BC, before the Romans sought to annex Sicily as their republic's first province. Rome attacked Carthage's holdings in Sicily in the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC) and won, making Sicily–with the exception of Syracuse–the first Roman province outside of the Italian Peninsula by 242 BC.

In the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC), the Carthaginians attempted to recapture Sicily. Some of the Greek cities on the island who were loyal to Rome switched sides to help the Carthaginians, prompting a Roman military response. Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse, helped defend his city from Roman invasion; Roman troops killed him after they captured Syracuse in 212 BC. The Carthaginian attempt failed, and Rome became more unrelenting in its annihilation of the invaders; Roman consul M. Valerian told the Roman Senate in 210 BC that "no Carthaginian remains in Sicily".

As the Roman Republic's granary, Sicily ranked as an important province, divided into two quaestorships: Syracuse to the east and Lilybaeum to the west. Roman rule introduced the Latin language to the island, which underwent a slow process of latinisation but Sicilian culture remained largely Greek and the Greek language did not become extinct on the island, facilitating its re-hellenisation much later under the Byzantines. The prosperity of the island went into sharp decline during the governorship of Verres (73 to 71 BC). In 70 BC, the noted statesman Cicero condemned the misgovernment of Verres in his oration In Verrem.

Various groups used the island as a power base at different times: slave insurgents occupied it during the First (135−132 BC) and Second (104−100 BC) Servile Wars. Sextus Pompey had his headquarters there during the Sicilian revolt of 44 to 36 BC. Christianity first appeared in Sicily during the years following AD 200; between this time and AD 313, when Emperor Constantine the Great lifted the prohibition on Christianity, a significant number of Sicilians had become martyrs, including Agatha, Christina, Lucy, and Euplius. Sicily remained a Roman province for around 700…