* 1991 – Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo is killed by the Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.

It is estimated that about 80 % of the businesses in the Sicilian cities of Catania and Palermo regularly pay protection money.

There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo following the Norman conquest of the island, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo ’ s royal Cappella Palatina, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II in 1140.

* 1993 – Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo.

* 1194 – Palermo is conquered by Emperor Henry VI.

His Optics is a work that survives only in a poor Arabic translation and in about twenty manuscripts of a Latin version of the Arabic, which was translated by Eugene of Palermo ( c. 1154 ).

The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale is a similar, but more complex scale.

* January 15 – Salvatore Riina, the Mafia boss known as ' The Beast ', is arrested in Palermo, Sicily, after 23 years as a fugitive.

* During the middle of the century, the Cappella Palatina is built in Palermo, Sicily, and the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript illustrates the Synopsis of Histories by John Skylitzes.

* The first Capuchin friar is entombed in the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo.

Palermo (, Sicilian: Palermu,, from, Panormos,, Balarm ; Phoenician: ז ִ יז, Ziz ) is a city in Insular Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo.

Palermo is located in the northwest of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The population of Palermo urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 855, 285, while its metropolitan area is the fifth most populated in Italy with around 1. 2 million people.

Palermo is Sicily's cultural, economic and touristic capital.

Palermo is the main Sicilian industrial and commercial center: the main industrial sectors include tourism, services, commerce and agriculture.

In fact, for cultural, artistic and economic reasons, Palermo was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean and is now among the top tourist destinations in both Italy and Europe.

The area attracts significant numbers of tourists each year and is widely known for its colourful fruit, vegetable and fish market at the heart of Palermo, known as the Vucciria.

His son Alberto died on the way to Palermo and is buried in the city.

The so-called " Sack of Palermo " is one of the major visible faces of this problem.

Today, Palermo is a city still struggling to recover from the devastation of uncontrolled urban growth.

Mazara del Vallo is connected to the rest of Sicily by a regional train service ( run by Trenitalia ), a private bus service ( only to Palermo ), and by car, via the A29 highway ( also known as Palermo-Mazara del Vallo ).

Bontade and other banished mafiosi managed to get into the market of international cigarette smuggling by imposing first their protection, and later their involvement, upon the smugglers in Naples ( who were connected with the Camorra ) and Palermo who had been running this activity since the 1950s.

While his sons overcame pockets of resistance on the mainland, on 5 November 1139 Roger returned to Palermo to plan a great act of legislation: the Assizes of Ariano an attempt to establish his dominions in southern Italy as a coherent state.

A ferry service connects Messina on Sicily with the mainland at Villa San Giovanni, which lies several kilometers north of the large city of Reggio Calabria ; the ferries hold the cars ( carriages ) of the mainline train service between Palermo and Naples.

There are also year-round flights from Lampedusa Airport to Palermo and Trapani-Birgi on the Sicilian mainland.

Another argument against the bridge is the poor state of the transport infrastructure in Sicily, particularly the railroad and Autostrada A20 linking Messina to Palermo, and poor state of the Autostrada A3 on the mainland linking Reggio Calabria to Naples.

The islands belonged to the Pallavicini-Rusconi family of Genoa until 1874, when they were bought by the Florio family of Palermo.

The doors of the palace at Palermo, which were made by Saracenic workmen for the Normans, are fine examples and in good preservation.

Oxford left Venice in March, intending to return home by way of Lyons and Paris ; although one later report has him as far south as Palermo in Sicily.

Giuseppe Verdi, the bust outside of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy by Antonio Ugo.

Probably due to the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands by the 14th century.

According to Anderson, Oxford definitely visited Venice, Padua, Milan, Genoa, Palermo, Florence, Siena and Naples, and probably passed through Messina, Mantua and Verona, all cities used as settings by Shakespeare.

A letter written by St. Gregory the Great to the abbot of St. Hermes in Palermo mentions an Agatho, a Greek born in Sicily to wealthy parents.

The discovery of element 43 was finally confirmed in a December 1936 experiment at the University of Palermo in Sicily conducted by Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè.

* 23 May 1992 – Able to a violent explosion on Autostrada A29 ( Italy ) section between the ' Punta Raisi Airport and Palermo, caused by the Mafia, causing the death of Judge Giovanni Falcone, a hero in the fight against organized crime.

Less than two months later, on 19 July, Falcone's co-worker and friend, magistrate Paolo Borsellino was killed by a car bomb in via D ' Amelio, Palermo, in front of his mother's house.

Palermo was also managed by Savoy between 1713 – 1717 and 1718 – 1720 and Austria between 1720 – 1734.

Charles ' son Ferdinand, though disliked by the population, took refuge in Palermo after the French Revolution in 1798.

The very large Teatro Massimo was designed in the same period by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, and built by the Rutelli & Machì building firm of the industrial and old Rutelli Italian family in Palermo, and was opened in 1897.

Palermo currently has an international airport, and a significant underground economy.

However, the syndicate is soon revealed to have become a large company, and then an international syndicate, making Minderbinder the Mayor of Palermo, Assistant Governor-General of Malta, Shah of Oran, Caliph of Baghdad, mayor of Cairo, and the god of corn, rain, and rice in various pagan African countries.

The Palermo court concluded that the network was " a further indication of the high criminal capability " of Caruana who had " escaped every judicial initiative during the last decades and succeeded in reaching the top of the international drug trade, adjusting his criminal contacts and showing such skill that he is to be considered as one of the most important exponents in this sector.

An international competition for the creation of the opera house was announced by the Palermo Council in 1864, primarily at the instigation of the mayor, Antonio Starrabba di Rudinì.

The first major international legislation concerning child trafficking is part of the 2000 United Nations Palermo protocols, titled the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.

Franco Brienza (; born 19 March 1979 ) is an Italian footballer who plays for Palermo in Serie A and also represented Italy at international level.