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Most tourists come to Italy for the wine and vistas, not to mention the pasta and pizza.
Many steer clear of the Triangle of Death – an area near the Sicilian capital, Palermo, that includes the town of Bagheria. The name dates back to the 1980s, when the Mafia carried out a series of gruesome killings in Bagheria and nearby Casteldaccia and Altavilla Milicia in the north of the island.
To this day, Bagheria, a town of some 50,000, remains a stronghold of the Sicilian Mafia, known locally as Cosa Nostra.
In the past, the town made headlines when mafiosi brutally tortured and killed their victims in a remote, abandoned nail factory, then dissolved the bodies in hydrochloric acid.

Today, the Mafia is more discreet. But while there is less bloodshed, they retain their steel grip on the region.
“Bagheria is still a Mafia town,” says an activist from the Pio La Torre anti-Mafia centre in Palermo.
The group’s grim legacy remains highly visible, with buildings disfiguring the skyline from a period of Mafia property speculation.
“From the mountains to the sea, the city is covered in concrete,” the activist says. Many businesses still pay the pizzo, protection money extorted by the Mafia, he says.
The group also maintains a tight grip on Bagheria’s drug trade, and the town is struggling with a high unemployment rate. These influences mar what otherwise is a highly appealing place.

Bagheria, just 15 minutes from Palermo, boasts a gorgeous coastline, breathtaking heritage and local cuisine shaped by the shoreline.
But Bagheria’s development has been paralysed by the Mafia. Despite the city’s attempts to curb its influence, calling on people to refuse to pay the pizzo and report those requesting it, or confiscating Mafia-owned properties, it remains almost impossible to remove the deep roots of the organisation, the activist says.
The Mafia simply feels at home here, he says.
Bagheria was founded as a place for the Sicilian nobility from Palermo to spend their summer holidays in villas outside the city.
Aristocratic residences dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Villa Palagonia, Villa Trabia and Villa Valguarnera, where the Italian writer Dacia Maraini spent time as a child, still recall those times.

Following World War II, the Mafia began to focus on property speculation, hoping to make fast cash selling ugly concrete structures.
In central Bagheria, the result is baroque villas beside clunky residential units, the impressive Villa Palagonia surrounded by multi-storey buildings.
Maraini, a local who has since moved to Rome, remembers the vista from Villa Valguarnera, which had to make way for the concrete blocks. “This view is now hideously obscured by pointlessly erected houses and tenements, to which trees, parks, gardens and old buildings have fallen victim,” she says.
The beauty of her hometown has been systematically destroyed by the structural disfigurement, Maraini says.
An estimated two million illegal buildings have been erected in Sicily, a practice called abusivismo edilizio – abusive construction – in Italian.

For every 100 buildings in Sicily erected legally, some 48 have been built without a permit, statistics authority Istat said recently.
The way the Mafia operates in Sicily and other areas of Italy has changed fundamentally since the 1990s, and the Cosa Nostra has lost much of its power, experts say. As a result, it is now much more difficult to detect their activities. Instead of bloodshed, Mafia bigwigs now focus on financial crimes and infiltrating the economy.
In Bagheria, the Mafia was closely linked to local politics for decades and did business in the property and agricultural sectors. That has changed, says the activist from Pio La Torre.
“Today, the core of their business is drug trafficking and extortion, which they can carry out autonomously,” he says.
In large Italian cities, hundreds of thousands take to the streets every year to demonstrate against the Mafia. Elsewhere, anti-Mafia centres such as Pio La Torre and individuals try to fight the criminals by focusing on youth work, organising demonstrations or refusing to pay the pizzo.
One of them, a businessman from Bagheria, recently found his car on fire in a car park.
For many, however, this battle has long ended in resignation. A survey of Italian students commissioned by Pio La Torre revealed that only one in five believes that the Mafia can be defeated.


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Wanted posters for the Sicilian Mafia “boss of bosses” Bernardo Provenzano in Bagheria, Sicily, in 2005. Bagheria is a beautiful coastal town with a dark legacy. Photo: AFP

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Villa Cattolica in Bagheria, which is 15 minutes from Sicily’s capital, Palermo. Photo: Shutterstock

The Mafia has been speculating on property since the end of World War II, resulting in ugly concrete buildings being built all over Sicily, in what the Sicilians call “abusive construction”. Photo: Shutterstock

Palermo, Sicily. According to statistics authority Istat, 48 per cent of Sicilian buildings were built without a permit. Photo: Shutterstock

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Lifestyle

Travel & Leisure

Bagheria has everything a tourist could want, from beaches to history and good food. But it also has an enduring Mafia presence


Bagheria has everything a tourist could want, from beaches to history and good food. But it also has an enduring Mafia presence.


Travel Destinations

Italy

Crime