The Sicily Brand

Place Brand and Misrepresentations

F. Hayez (1791-1882), “the Sicilian Vespers”, 1846 - detail

Place brand is the immediate perception of a location, highlighting its unique identity, and fostering pride among its residents. It is also a powerful economic key factor. A well-managed place brand can enhance the value of products, services, and resources associated with that location, driving economic growth and cultural recognition.

Conversely, negative stereotypes and misrepresentations—often perpetuated by fictional narratives in cinema or literature—can severely harm the reputation of a place and its community. These distortions erode cultural identity, diminishing the perceived value of products, services, goods and everything originating from that location.

A poignant example is Sicily, a place with a millennia-long history and a legacy as the Kingdom of Sicily (1130 - 1816), which for centuries boasted an innovative and effective parliamentary monarchy (i.e., with a Parliament endowed with real deliberative and not merely consultative powers), which became a full constitutional monarchy in 1812, that significantly influenced the development of modern Western democracy.

Despite its rich heritage and a population of approximately 5 million (comparable to many modern European states), Sicily has long been mischaracterized globally as a poor, backward, and crime-ridden place. This perception stems largely from one-way fictional portrayals, including some of the most famous literary and cinematic works.

Such enduring myth depicts Sicily as a "paradise inhabited by devils," a narrative that originated out of nothing in the second half of the nineteenth century likely for political and commercial purposes, in any case after Sicily was absorbed into other states.

Although the international scientific literature has been peaceful for decades and now agrees on the fact that the phenomena of organized crime arose in Sicily no earlier than the second half of the nineteenth century, when it was therefore no longer a sovereign state with its own bodies and institutions, still today many sources - some of which are even foreign governmental - and even documentaries are continuing to deliver the nineteenth century false narrative which described such criminal phenomena as inherent in Sicily since the early Middle Ages (although there was never a trace of these “organizations” in any of the sources, whether Sicilian or foreign, prior to the mid-nineteenth century).

It is also appropriate to highlight that this surreal theory was based on a narrative of evident racism which, in line with nineteenth-century beliefs, considered Sicilians to be a people genetically inclined to crime due to a supposed Arab line of descent. The only historical reference would be to the Emirate of Sicily, an ephemeral state that lasted less than two hundred years in the early Middle Ages and before the foundation of the actual Kingdom of Sicily in 1130.

This misleading portrayal has often been accompanied by another equally misleading narrative—popularized by a globally acclaimed masterpiece of cinema and literature set in the mid-19th century—which paints Sicilians as a resigned, fatalistic people long accustomed to (mostly invented) foreign dominations. This characterization is paradoxical given that the European revolutions of 1848 began in Sicily, with Palermo at the epicenter. Not even mentioning the revolution of the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, against the Angevin government, made famous even by Giuseppe Verdi's opera of the same name. Just like all the revolutions that the Sicilian people have triggered in those few cases they found themselves subject to some foreign power.

At our law firm, we are committed to supporting and promoting the proactive management of the Sicily brand as a strategic resource with added value to support Sicilian creativity. We work to counteract stereotypical aggression and identity-based discrimination against Sicilian individuals, entities, and entrepreneurs worldwide. Through strategic legal action and advocacy, we aim to preserve and enhance the authentic cultural identity of Sicily, ensuring that its rich history and contributions to global progress are rightfully recognized and celebrated. Thus restoring the right economic and moral value to goods and services directly or indirectly connected to Sicily or the Sicilian Community in the world