I was never a huge fan of any of the Godfather movies until I watched the entire trilogy over the period of a week. ( The Godfather - Part III is the dud of the series, infamously diminished by the casting of Sofia Coppola as Michael Corleone’s daughter. She can’t act. That’s not t...

For a small fee, you can tour the underground catacombs of the Capuchin monastery in Palermo, Sicily, where 2,000 well-dressed but decaying bodies, mostly from the 19th c., are on display.   Nobody knows exactly why they have been preserved.  From the February issue of National Geogra...

As Tracing the Tribe has previously noted, Sicily had a large medieval Jewish population. Following the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain, many of them came to Sicily. Unfortunately, the Jewish community was expelled from the island in 1493. Many left for mainland Italy, across the Straits of Messin...

Homo's zijn net vrouwen! Althans, zo denken ze er op Sicilië over. Tijdens z'n keuring voor militaire dienst vertelde Danilo Giuffrida aan zijn keuringsarts dat 'ie van de mannenliefde was. Prompt stuurde de keuringsinstantie het keuringsrapport door naar het italiaanse CBR met de melding dat hij d...

I'm back from Sicily. I enjoyed it a lot. Sicily has a lot of history; being a fertile island, it was invaded by everyone you ever heard of: Phoenicians, Saracens, Normans, French, Spanish, Muslims. The only people who didn't invade it were the Jews, and they were probably getting up an expedition w...

I am sure that many of you have already guessed who the winner of the prize is and for those of you worried that it might be Scotland or Wales I am very happy to announce that the winner in my quest to find the world's best food country is.....Italy! In all fairness how could it ever have been anywh...

De FBI en haar Italiaanse evenknie hebben gisteren de maffia een grote slag toegebracht. In Amerika zijn 58 leden van de Gambino familie opgepakt, waaronder John 'Jackie Nose' D'Amico, de huidige leider van de Gambino familie. De Gambino familie werd tot z'n dood door Carlo Gambino geleid en daarna ...