The Flag of Sicily

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After my recent trip to Sicily, many viewers have asked about the Flag of Sicily, so I thought I might provide a few interesting tidbits of information……..

Flag of the Sicilian Region Italiano: Bandiera...

Flag of the Sicilian Region Italiano: Bandiera della Regione Siciliana Sicilianu: Bannera dâ Riggiuni Siciliana Deutsch: Flagge der Sizilianischen Region (oder der Autonomen Region Sizilien) Français : Drapeau de la Région Sicilienne Español: Bandera de la Región Siciliana Português: Bandeira da Região Siciliana (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The flag of Sicily was first adopted in 1282, after the successful  revolt against Charles I of Sicily. 

It is characterized by the presence of the triskelion in its middle, the winged head of Medusa and three wheat ears.

Sicilian Triskelion

Sicilian Triskelion (Photo credit: NatalieMaynor)

The three bent legs allegedly represent the three points of the triangular shape of the island of Sicily itself.

The present design became the official public flag of the Autonomous Region of Sicily on January 4, 2000, after the passing of an apposite law which advocates its use on public buildings, schools, city halls, and all the other places in which Sicily is represented.

The flag is bisected diagonally into regions colored red and yellow, red representing the municipality of Palermo, yellow representing Corleone, which in medieval times was an agricultural city of renown. Palermo and Corleone were the first two cities to found a confederation against the Capetian House of Angevin rule.

The flag looks somewhat similar to the flag of the Isle of Man,

especially for the use of the triskelion in both of these; today, the triskelion (or ”trisceli”) is also widely considered the actual symbol of Sicily. The symbol is also known as the ”trinacria”, which is also an ancient name of Sicily. The name was also revived and used during the Aragonese period of the Kingdom of Sicily immediately after the Sicilian Vespers (1282) which ended Angevin rule. 

During the period of Muslim rule under Emirate of Sicily.   Sicily used a pure green flag, similar to the former national Flag of Libya, Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1977–2011) under Muammar Gaddafi.

The national flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya. Th...

The national flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya. This is a duplication of File:Flag of Libya.svg by Zscout370, anticipating that because of the ongoing civil war, the filename “Flag of Libya” will not be unambiguous in the near future. An unambiguous description of this flag is that it is the flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya introduced in 1977. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Coat of arms of Sicily

Coat of arms of Sicily (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Flag of the Kingdom of Sicily (1243 to 1410) I...

Flag of the Kingdom of Sicily (1243 to 1410) Italiano: Bandiera del Regno di Sicilia (1243 – 1410) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the flag of the Sicilian Independence ...

This is the flag of the Sicilian Independence Movement of the 1940s and was used by Salvatore Giuliano. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

9 responses »

  1. So interesting! Wanted to thank you again for your great comments on the airports. Much appreciated!

  2. But WHY Medusa’s head? I mean, the three legs I can live with, but the lady with the snakes who turns viewers to stone, what’s her function on the flag??????
    (Hmmmm, you haven’t been turned to stone yet, have you?)

  3. Pingback: La Coka Nostra European tour 2012: unica data siciliana Palermo 1 giugno Villa Lampedusa | Cooked News

  4. Pingback: Books and Bibelots…. « THE COASTAL CRONE

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