May 23, 2023 marks 31 years since tensions between the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra and the Italian government reached an explosive climax. This date will now also mark the opening of a new anti-mafia museum in Palermo, Italy, dedicated to Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two anti-crime leaders murdered 57 days apart by the Sicilian mafia.
The publicly and privately funded museum will open in the 18th-century neoclassical Palazzo Jung palace in Palermo, source report. Join an existing No Mafia Memorial and Museum, the new institution will offer archival documents, films and photos on loan from major Italian museums, as well as immersive olfactory and sound experiences. Two other sites in Rome and Bolzano are also planned.
The project is led by the Fondazione Falcone, created by Maria Falcone, Giovanni’s sister. The late Falcone died on May 23, 1992 in an explosion set off by gangsters in a last-ditch effort to thwart the plans of an Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate (DIA) and a National Anti-Mafia Directorate (DNA). Both Falcone and Borsellino were in the running to lead DNA as “super prosecutor”. Both were bombed to death – Falcone first, from a 1,100-pound blast so powerful it registered with seismic monitors on the other side of Sicily.
The remains of Giovanni Falcone’s Croma armored escort car on display in Milan in March 2022. Photo: Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images.
Maria Falcone stressed in a statement that the foundation’s latest initiative “will not just be a museum of memory but also a dynamic place where people can meet”, calling it “a special cultural space that unites institutions, led by the State Police and Carabinieri”. , individuals and other partner museums.
The museum follows the foundation’s other anti-Mafia initiatives in Palermo. In 2022, his Spazi Capaci project recruited artists such as Andrea Buglisi, Peter Demetz and Velasco Vitali to stage public art interventions across the city. “We have always known that culture is one of the best weapons against the mafia”, says Falcone at this moment.
From the museum, the mayor of Palermo Roberto Lagalla added that “students and young people will be the active protagonists of what we hope to become an interactive, narrative and itinerant museum which, in addition to making our history known to other Italian cities, proposes itself as a place of welcome and reflection for tourists, the world of work, companies and citizens.
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