In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 8 – Falcone and Borsellino

As true fans of Inspector Montalbano [see previous post] will know, there is a strong link between his career and the assassination of magistrate Giovanni Falcone. If you don't know it, you need to check out the equally excellent prequel series, Young Montalbano.

Falcone – like Montalbano to a degree – rubbed up against the Mafia but in a much more intense and dangerous way in the all too real world. His campaign to bring the godfathers and mobsters to justice led inevitably to his being blown away in an horrendous bombing near Palermo.

A similar fate soon overtook his fellow magistrate and friend Paolo Borsellino in the city itself.

The gruesome deaths of Falcone and Borsellino seemed to help Sicily turn a corner and to start standing up to the Mafia. 

And today the two men are commemorated as martyrs to their cause.

It seemed important to visit the tomb of Falcone in Palermo's San Domenico church – even though the awful truth is that there was nothing left of him to bury.

Falcone's tomb  ©Nigel Summerley

A lovely image of him and Borsellino decorates a tall building near the Palermo waterfront: two smiling men united in fighting a war that they well knew would most likely lead to their deaths.

Heroes are so often in short supply... but that is what these men were.

Immortalised: Falcone and Borsellino  ©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live... More – 9: The Vast Picture Show

Now you see it...   Photo©Nigel Summerley

The church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the heart of old Naples has a bizarre two-for-one offer. If you venture into the area behind the altar, there is, not surprisingly, a huge but fairly gloomy painting depicting St George.

However, if you wait until a small crowd gathers, one of the church's staff will appear and perform a minor miracle, pulling back this picture by means of a giant handle to reveal... another depiction of St George. But this one is a bright and vibrant fresco by the 17th-century Neapolitan master Aniello Falcone.

As with many things in Naples, there is a strange and almost impenetrable explanation for this curiosity. Falcone is said to have executed the fresco in the 1640s when the church was being rebuilt after a fire. The building work didn't actually get finished until the 18th century (a long delay even by builders' standards), by which time the fresco seems to have been covered over and the enormous painting of St George by Alessio D'Elia was put in place. It wasn't until the 1990s that the Falcone was discovered – during yet more building work.

Why the Falcone was forgotten about for 300 years remains a mystery – as does who came up with the idea of having two paintings occupying the same wall space, thus requiring someone to operate a very long pole to make them both visible.

The one certainty is that this oddity brings a constant flow of visitors to the church of San Giorgio Maggiore.

Photo©Nigel Summerley