Located in the extension of the tip of the Apennine peninsula, from which is separated only by the narrow Strait of Messina, Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Its terrain is mostly hilly and intensively cultivated, but has also mountain ranges. The eastern coast is dominates by the Mount Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe, and the Aeolian Islands, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the northeast of mainland Sicily, exhibit also a volcanic complex, including Stromboli. With a population of slightly more than 5 million, it has only two metropolitan areas: the capital Palermo, and Catania. For a long time the poorest region of Italy, with a social, economic and political life dominated by Mafia (Cosa Nostra), which led to massive waves of emigration, especially in Americas, in the last years Sicily had a regular growth, mainly due to the reforms in agriculture, the investments in industry and tourism development, so that today it is the eighth richest italian region in terms of total GDP.
The earliest archeological evidence of human dwelling on the island dates from 8000 BC. At around 750 BC it was host to Phoenician and Greek colonies and for the next 600 years it was the site of the Greek-Punic and Roman-Punic wars, which ended with the destruction of Carthage. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Sicily often changed hands, and during the early Middle Ages it was ruled in turn by the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Saracens and Normans. Later on, the Kingdom of Sicily lasted between 1130 and 1816, first subordinated to the crowns of Aragon, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and finally unified under the Bourbons with Naples, as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Following the Expedition of the Thousand, a Giuseppe Garibaldi-led revolt during the Italian Unification process and a plebiscite, it became part of Italy in 1860. After the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946, Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region.
The flag of Sicily (which is also its coat of arms) was first adopted in 1282, after the successful Sicilian Vespers revolt against the king Charles I of Sicily. It is characterized by the presence of the triskelion (trinacria) in its middle, the (winged) head of Medusa and three wheat ears. The three bent legs allegedly represent the three points of the triangular shape of the island. The present design became the official public flag of the Autonomous Region of Sicily on 4 January 2000. 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. The triskelion appears also on the flag of the Isle of Man.
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