Italy's Mafia and Antimafia: The Organization That Built the State Within the State and the People Who Died to Dismantle It
Giovanni Falcone was killed on May 23, 1992. Paolo Borsellino was killed on July 19, 1992. Both were Palermo magistrates who had spent 15 years building the Maxi Trial, the largest organized crime prosecution in history (475 defendants, 360 convictions in 1987). Both were killed by the Cosa Nostra with bombs placed under motorways. The Falcone bombing killed 5 people. The Borsellino bombing killed 5 people. The specific character of the Italian mafia is this: it kills judges. Understanding the mafia requires understanding what kind of violence was being deployed against what kind of institutional courage.
Compare the same experience on GetYourGuide and Viator, save what you like to My Trip, share it, and book when you’re sure. Nearest to this page first.
Street food capital2,244 reviews
Palermo
Street food capital of Italy: the market tours here out-review most Roman museums.
The Three Italian Organized Crime Organizations: The Structural Differences
Italy's three primary organized crime organizations are structurally distinct, not regional variants of the same phenomenon but genuinely different organizations with different histories, different economic models, and different relationships with the Italian state:
Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia, the most internationally known): The Sicilian Cosa Nostra (the name means "Our Thing" in Sicilian dialect) developed in the 19th-century agricultural latifondo system of western Sicily, the absentee landlord system that required local strongmen (the gabellotti, the rent-collecting managers of the large estates) to enforce labour compliance. The Cosa Nostra formalised this violent enforcement role into the distinctive organizational structure (the mandamento, the territorial unit. The famiglia, the local cell. The commissione, the governing board of family leaders) documented during the 1984 testimony of Tommaso Buscetta (the first Cosa Nostra boss to become a collaborator with the justice system, the pentito whose testimony to magistrate Giovanni Falcone produced the Maxi Trial). Cosa Nostra's peak power period: the 1970s–1990s, when the organization effectively controlled western Sicily's political and economic institutions, killed 4 Italian politicians, 2 magistrates, 5 police chiefs, and 1 prefect in the period 1979–1993. The Maxi Trial (1986–1987): the largest organized crime trial in history, 475 defendants, conducted in a purpose-built fortified bunker courthouse in Palermo, 342 sentences, the most consequential Italian judicial event of the 20th century. Camorra (Naples and Campania): The Neapolitan Camorra is the oldest and least centralised of the three organizations, documented in the Bourbon prison system of Naples in the 1820s, the Camorra has never had the hierarchical central commission of Cosa Nostra but operates as a network of competing clans in a perpetual state of alliance and conflict. The specific Camorra geography: the Secondigliano, Scampia, and Forcella neighborhoods of Naples (the most Camorra-concentrated urban areas in Italy) and the Caserta plain (the "Land of Fires", the area of illegal waste dumping that Roberto Saviano documented in Gomorrah, the 2006 book that made Saviano's life permanently dangerous).
Roberto Saviano and the Gomorrah effect: Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah (2006, the investigative narrative of the Neapolitan Camorra's economic operations, illegal waste disposal, and violence, published when Saviano was 26 years old) is the most important Italian non-fiction book of the 21st century. The Camorra response: death threats that have required Saviano to live under police protection since 2006, rotating between safe houses in Italy and periodic residence abroad. Saviano is currently (2026) under continued police protection, 20 years after publication, the most sustained threat response to a book in Italian publishing history. The specific Gomorrah documentation: the book's revelation of the Camorra's role in the international textile and construction industries (the specific supply chain connections between the Secondigliano clans and Chinese-Italian garment factories in Prato, the Campania illegal dumping of toxic waste from northern Italian industrial companies) made it more economically threatening than any previous Camorra journalism. The film adaptation (2008, directed by Matteo Garrone, Palme d'Or at Cannes) and the next TV series are the most internationally distributed Italian organized crime documentations.
This image has been extracted from another file · photo Davide Mauro · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
The Antimafia Movement: The Citizens Who Said No
The Italian antimafia movement is the most extraordinary grassroots civic resistance movement in post-war Europe: Libera (the antimafia civil society association, libera.it, founded 1995 by Don Luigi Ciotti): The most significant antimafia civil society organization, coordinating 1,600+ associations, groups, and schools across Italy in antimafia education, antimafia economics (the Libera Terra cooperatives that farm confiscated mafia land, described below), and the annual March 21 National Memorial Day for the Innocent Victims of the Mafia (the march through a different Italian city each year, the names of all mafia victims read publicly, the most moving Italian civic commemoration, attended by 100,000+ people annually). Libera Terra cooperatives: The most specific expression of the antimafia economic alternative, the agricultural cooperatives that farm the land confiscated from convicted mafia members under Italian law (the 1996 Rognoni-La Torre law that allows confiscated mafia assets to be transferred to civil society) producing olive oil, wine, pasta, and honey sold commercially under the Libera Terra label (available online at liberaterra.it and at organic food stores in Italy). Buying Libera Terra products is the most specifically antimafia consumer action available to visitors. The Falcone Foundation (Fondazione Giovanni e Francesca Falcone, fondazionefalcone.it): The foundation established in memory of Giovanni Falcone and his wife Francesca Morvillo (both killed in the 1992 Capaci bombing) conducting antimafia education in Italian schools.
What is the Italian antimafia movement?
The Italian antimafia movement is the civic and legal response to organized crime that developed most intensely in Sicily and Campania from the 1980s onward: Libera (libera.it, the most important civil society organization, 1,600+ member organizations, the Libera Terra confiscated-land cooperatives, Don Luigi Ciotti founder). The Falcone Foundation (fondazionefalcone.it, education and commemoration of the 1992 Capaci and Via D'Amelio bombings). And the Addiopizzo movement (addiopizzo.org, the Palermo shopkeeper association that refuses to pay the pizzo, the mafia protection money. The "anti-pizzo map" of Palermo businesses that have publicly refused, visible on the Addiopizzo website, the most directly actionable consumer antimafia support in Palermo, spending in Addiopizzo-registered businesses is the most specific anti-Cosa Nostra economic action in Sicily). The Libera Terra products (wine, olive oil, pasta produced on confiscated mafia land, available at liberaterra.it) are the most internationally accessible antimafia support buy.
Palermo Antimafia Sites: What Visitors Can See
The Falcone Tree (the albero Falcone. Via Notarbartolo 23, Palermo): The tree outside the apartment building where Giovanni Falcone lived (the building where the Cosa Nostra monitored his movements before the Capaci bombing) has been a spontaneous memorial since 1992, covered with notes, flowers, photographs, and antimafia messages year-round, the most visited non-institutional antimafia site in Palermo. The Capaci motorway site (the Capaci bombing site, the A29 motorway, 8km from Palermo): The site of the May 23, 1992 bomb that killed Falcone, Morvillo, and three police escort officers, a memorial stone and garden at the motorway service area marks the site. Accessible by car from Palermo (15 minutes on the A29). The Antimafia Museum at the former Ucciardone prison (Palermo): The Ucciardone (the Palermo prison where the Maxi Trial defendants were housed during the 1986–1987 proceedings) has been partially converted to an antimafia documentation center (check the current opening status at the Palermo municipal culture office). Addiopizzo Map (addiopizzo.org): The most practical visitor antimafia engagement, eating, shopping, and spending in Addiopizzo-registered Palermo businesses is the direct consumer support for the anti-pizzo movement. Related: Sicily guide.
Engage With Italy's Antimafia Heritage
Addiopizzo Palermo registered business map, Libera Terra products buy online, the Falcone Tree Via Notarbartolo visit, and the March 21 National Antimafia Victims Day annual march location.
Mafia (Cosa nostra) in Sicily, picciotti young members of the mafia late 19th century · photo Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Italy's Extraordinary Cooking Schools: Learning the Regional Traditions From People Who Grew Up Making Them
The Italian cooking school market divides into two categories: the tourist cooking experience (the 3-hour class in a scenic villa kitchen, producing a plate of pasta and a limoncello, a photograph, and a printed recipe card) and the serious instruction (the week-long residential program where you genuinely learn technique). Both are legitimate, but they produce different results:
Serious residential cooking schools: Apicius (Via Ghibellina 87, Florence, apicius.it, the most academically accredited Italian culinary school, semester programs and intensive summer and winter courses, the specific Florence pastry and bread tradition alongside the full Italian curriculum). The Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners (ICIF, Costigliole d'Asti, Piedmont, the most wine-connected serious Italian cooking school, residential 1–6 week programs, the Langhe and Monferrato wine territory as the gastronomic context). And the Gambero Rosso Academy (Rome and multiple locations, gamberorosso.it, the cooking school of the most authoritative Italian food and wine publication, 1-day workshops to professional programs). The most accessible serious half-day format: In Bologna, the Scuola di Cucina di Casa Artusi (Via Costa, Forlimpopoli, the cooking school at the birthplace of Pellegrino Artusi, the 19th-century author of La Scienza in Cucina e l'Arte di Mangiare Bene, the most important Italian cookbook, the one that created a unified Italian cuisine from regional traditions. The school teaches the Artusi recipes in the Artusi house, the most specifically literary Italian cooking education available). In Rome, the Ursula Ferraro cooking school (the most established private Rome cooking teacher, the market-to-table format, maximum 8 participants, contact via casarezzori.com for the Rome program). The specific value of a serious Italian cooking school: the technique knowledge that allows you to make the pasta at home in a form your Italian teacher would recognise.
What are the best cooking schools in Italy?
Italy's best cooking schools by type: serious residential. Apicius Florence (semester and intensive, apicius.it), ICIF Costigliole d'Asti Piedmont (wine-territory residential, icif.it). Serious day programs. Gambero Rosso Academy Rome (gamberorosso.it, the most accessible serious single-day program). The Casa Artusi Forlimpopoli (the Artusi recipe tradition at the author's birthplace, casartusi.it). And Bologna market cooking schools (the Bologna private cooking teacher network offers the best regional instruction, the bolognese ragù, the tortellini, the crescentine, from teachers with genuine family transmission of the recipes). The tourist cooking experience (the 3-hour Tuscany villa class): perfectly acceptable for the experience and the photograph, not a substitute for serious technique learning. Related: Italian food guide.
Italy's Extraordinary Pre-Roman Civilisations: The Etruscans, the Samnites, and the Nuragic Sardinians
Italy's pre-Roman cultural heritage is less internationally known and often more extraordinary than the Roman, the specific civilisations that Rome encountered and either absorbed or destroyed:
The Etruscans (the most visible. 8th to 1st century BC): The Etruscan civilisation (the Etrusci or Rasenna, the people who occupied the current Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria territories before the Roman expansion) is the most archaeologically visible pre-Roman Italian culture. The Etruscan contribution to Rome: the arch (the corbelled arch, which the Romans adopted and used for their engineering infrastructure, without the Etruscan arch, no Roman aqueduct, no Colosseum, no Pantheon dome is possible). The toga (the Etruscan tebenna, adopted by Rome as the formal garment). The gladiatorial games (the Etruscan funeral combat ritual, adopted by Rome as public entertainment, the specific cultural transfer from Etruscan aristocratic ritual to Roman mass entertainment is the most culturally consequential Italian cultural appropriation). And the augury tradition (the interpretation of bird flight and animal entrails for political decision-making, the Etruscan haruspex priests performing the augury that Roman magistrates required before major decisions). The most accessible Etruscan sites: the Cerveteri Bandabaccia necropolis (UNESCO 2004, the most extensive, accessible from Rome in 40 minutes by train, free access to the outer zone, €8 for the main necropolis). The Tarquinia painted tombs (UNESCO 2004, the most visually extraordinary, the polychrome fresco paintings in the underground tomb chambers accessible through the visitor center, €10, Tuesday–Sunday). The Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia (Rome, Piazza di Villa Giulia 9, €10, the finest Etruscan art collection in the world: the Bride and Groom sarcophagus, the Apollo of Veio, the Ficoroni Cista).
What are the best Etruscan sites in Italy?
Italy's best Etruscan sites: Cerveteri Bandabaccia necropolis (Rome province. 40 minutes by train from Rome Termini, the most extensive, free outer zone + €8 main area, UNESCO 2004). Tarquinia painted tombs (Viterbo province, train from Rome, €10, the most visually extraordinary Etruscan painting cycles, UNESCO 2004). Volterra (Tuscany, the most complete Etruscan urban heritage accessible to visitors, the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci with the finest Etruscan bronze collection in Tuscany including the L'Ombra della Sera, the elongated bronze figure that inspired Giacometti. €8). And the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia (Rome, the finest Etruscan art museum, the Bride and Groom sarcophagus and the Apollo of Veio, €10). The Etruscan language remains undeciphered beyond basic vocabulary, it isn't an Indo-European language and has no known relatives, making every Etruscan inscription a specifically limited translation exercise. Related: Italy ancient history guide.
Plan the rest of your Italy trip
The essentials, compared and booked with the official sellers. Same price for you. We may earn a commission.
Italy How do you want to travel?
Tours & experiencesGYG · Viator
Top things to do in Italy, compared across sellers
