Most tourists come to Italy for the wine and views, not to mention the pasta and pizza.
Many avoid the Triangle of Death – an area near the Sicilian capital Palermo that also includes the city of Bagheria.
The name dates back to the 1980s, when the mafia committed 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 inhabitants, remains to this day a stronghold of the Sicilian mafia, known locally as Cosa Nostra.
In the past, the city made headlines when mafiosi brutally tortured and murdered their victims in a remote, abandoned denim factory and then dissolved the bodies in hydrochloric acid.
Nowadays the mafia is more discreet. But while there is less bloodshed, they maintain their steely grip on the region.
“Bagheria is still a mafia town,” says an activist from the anti-mafia center Pio La Torre in Palermo.
The group’s grim legacy remains clearly visible, with buildings dotting the skyline from a period of mafia real estate speculation.
“From the mountains to the sea, the city is covered in concrete,” says the activist.
Many companies still pay the ‘pizzo’, protection money extorted by the mafia, he says.
The group also has a tight grip on the drug trade in Bagheria, and the city suffers from high unemployment.
Continued presence of the mafia
These influences mar what is otherwise a very attractive city.
Located just 15 minutes from Palermo, Bagheria boasts a beautiful coastline, breathtaking heritage and local cuisine shaped by the coastline.
But Bagheria’s development has been paralyzed by the mafia.
Despite the city’s attempts to curb its influence, calling on people to refuse to pay for the pizzo and reporting those who ask for it, or confiscating mafia property, it remains virtually impossible to to remove the organization’s deep roots, says the activist.
The mafia simply feels at home here, he says.
Once home Sciliys nobility
Bagheria was founded as a place for the Sicilian nobility from Palermo to spend their summer holidays in villas outside the city.
Aristocratic homes from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Villa Palagonia, Villa Trabia and Villa Valguarnera, where the Italian writer Dacia Maraini grew up, are still reminders of that time.
After World War II, the mafia began to focus heavily on real estate speculation, hoping to make a quick buck by selling ugly concrete structures.
In the center of Bagheria, the result is baroque villas next to clumsy residential units, the impressive Villa Palagonia surrounded by multi-storey buildings.
Maraini, a resident who has since moved to Rome, remembers the view from Villa Valguarnera, which had to make way for the concrete blocks. “This view is now hideously obscured by senselessly constructed houses and tenements, which have fallen victim to trees, parks, gardens and old buildings,” she says.
The beauty of her hometown has been systematically destroyed by the structural deformities, says Maraini.
An estimated two million illegal buildings have been built in Sicily, a practice known in Italian as ‘abusivismo edilizio’ (abusive construction).
For every 100 buildings built legally in Sicily, about 48 were built without permits, statistical authority Istat said recently.
Modern criminals
The way the mafia operates in Sicily and other parts of Italy has changed fundamentally since the 1990s, and Cosa Nostra has lost much of its power, experts say.
As a result, it is now much more difficult to track their activities. Instead of bloodshed, the mafia leaders are now focusing on financial crimes and infiltrating the economy.
In Bagheria, the mafia was closely linked to local politics for decades and did business in the real estate and agricultural sectors. That has changed, says Pio La Torre activist.
“Today the core of their activities is drug trafficking and extortion, which they can carry out autonomously,” he says.
Every year, hundreds of thousands take to the streets in major Italian cities to demonstrate against the mafia. Elsewhere, anti-mafia centers such as Pio La Torre and individuals are trying to fight the criminals by focusing on youth work, organizing demonstrations or refusing to pay for the pizzo.
One of them, a businessman from Bagheria, recently found his car on fire in a parking lot.
For many, however, this battle has long since ended in resignation.
A survey of Italian students commissioned by Pio La Torre found that only one in five believes the mafia can be defeated.
