Until recently, this city was infamous as one of the world's organised crime capitals. Warring mobsters gunned down rivals in the streets and built ugly high-rise apartments with public funds while much of the historic centre was left to crumble.
A public art campaign in Palermo, Sicily, is reminding residents of the city’s grim Mafia years, and is encouraging them to resist creeping organized crime influence.
Andrea Buglisi has created a 30-m high mural of assassinated judge Giovanni Falcone Courtesy of Alessandro De Lisi
Four major public art commissions honouring victims of the Mafia have been unveiled in Palermo, marking the start of a three year project which aims to unite the local community in their collective opposition to organised crime.
Entitled
Spazi Capaci, the project includes the first ever contemporary art exhibition in the high-security bunker of the Ucciardone prison, built for the Maxi Trial, the landmark criminal trial of Mafia bosses, which took place in Palermo from 1986 to 1992.
Patrizio Bianchi, Italy’s education minister, attended the inauguration of the project on 23 May. The date marked the 29th anniversary of the Capaci massacre, when a car bomb placed by the Mafia along the A29 motorway exploded, killing the Maxi Trial judge Giovanni Falcone.