Corleone

I chose Sicily for my wife’s trip based largely on pictures of the spectacular coast and a history that far predates the mafia, so I’m not sure what I expected to find inland in a town like Corleone. But our visit to the place made famous by The Godfather was strange and eerie, and for a while I was thinking that Sicily might have been a mistake.

It’s a bit hard to say from a short visit what affect the Godfather novels and movies have had on Corleone, and how much of its somber creepiness is due to the nonfictional mafia presence, which in the last several decades especially has been considerable. Salvatore Riina, for example, had two judges murdered, and apparently was the straw that broke the mafia’s back; his crime family, based in his native Corleone, drew so much attention that the Italian authorities made a huge effort to wipe out the mafia in Sicily once and for all. According to the reports of Riina’s arrest and imprisonment, Sicilians in general and inhabitants of Corleone especially were jubilant that “The Devil” had finally been successfully prosecuted and run out of town.

A September, 2006 article in the TimesOnline states that “Some Corleone citizens have become so fed up with visitors looking for traces of the Corleone family that they have suggested changing its name.” Kathy and Toto told us that they have tourists come from all over the world just to drive to Corleone and have their pictures taken in front of the town sign. Corleone’s mafia presence existed long before and long after the novel and movies, but most of the world knows Corleone as the ancestral home of Don Vito—I doubt the town would get as many tourists looking for mafia lore as it does without the Hollywood connection.

Even before we got out of the car, Corleone had a very strange vibe. On the surface it looks like most other inland towns we visited, though perhaps a bit more run down than some that can boast a great church or other non-mafia tourist draw. Everywhere we went we saw old men gathered in groups, plain slacks and white shirts the standard garb. I wanted to take pictures but recalled that this is frowned upon in the underworld, and though we didn’t really think we were seeing groups of retired Mafiosi, we weren’t confident about that. I snuck a few shots here and there, but frankly lacked the guts to photograph any of the men openly. It was that creepy.

We saw almost no women, very few kids or teenagers of either gender, but around each corner another group of old men in white shirts sitting around talking quietly. We searched for the mafia museum, which is supposed to have an interesting history of the fight against organized crime, but found it closed. L managed to do a little shopping in a small ceramics store while I stood outside on the nearly deserted street, looking for something to photograph and finding very little. People eyed us suspiciously. Obviously we were tourists, and perhaps the locals have grown so accustomed and so bitter about movie fans seeing their town as nothing more than a mafia icon that they assumed we were the same.

We didn’t stay long. It was hot and to our perception hostile with the exception of the two teenaged girls in the tiny tourism office who cheerfully handed us a map and recommended the mafia museum. I guess they didn’t know it was closed that day. We left Corleone after no more than an hour and a half of wandering around and drove back toward Bolognetta. About five minutes out of town we saw this sign:



We wondered was Ficuzza was like, since Corleone had been a wash. We followed a narrow winding road to a small town that seemed to be a kind of Corleone annex. The small square around which sat several small shops and cafes presented the same city sign and map that we’d seen in Corleone, but we couldn’t find our current location on that map. Even though this place, whatever it was, seemed technically to be part of Corleone the people were completely different. There were women and younger men, even a few kids playing in the street. We parked and got a coffee at a café that was at first deserted inside. When I asked one of the few occupied tables if anyone was working the counter, one of the women popped up apologizing and when her calls for help inside went unanswered, she served L a pistachio gelato and me an espresso.

Some others came into the café’s courtyard and chatted happily with those they met. Two elderly grannies stopped in to say hello in baffling Sicilian before going on their way, arm in arm.



It was a nice contrast after downtown Corleone and we seemed to be getting the trip back on track. The next day we would head east along to coast to Cefalu, and all our travel prayers would be answered…