The small town of Salemi in Sicily has organized its own special celebrations to mark the coming 150 th anniversary of the Unification of Italy. Salemi claims, in fact, to be the first capital of a united Italy, an honour which it held for one day only on the 14 th May 1860 when Giuseppe Garibaldi, at the head of victorious  Mille (his Thousand Men) proclaimed himself Dictator in the name of King Vittorio Emanuele II. Salemi Town Hall was therefore the first place to raise the Italian flag.

Italys President, Giorgio Napolitano, will be at Salemi on the 14 th May to mark the event. He will be greeted by a symbolic army of 1000 children dressed as Garibaldis Red Shirted troops.

Mayor Vittorio Sgarbi, an eminent art critic, TV personality and a former Minister of Culture, has made enormous efforts to put Salemi on the map. He hit the international headlines shortly after he was nominated mayor in 2008 by offering houses in Salemi that had been abandoned after the Belice earthquake in 1968 for the nominal price of 1 to anyone willing to restore the property. The appeal attracted over 10,000  enquiries, many from artists, singers and cinema celebrities.

The 150 th anniversary will also see the inauguration of Salemis ambitious new museum and art gallery complex, conceived with the help of photographer Oliviero Toscani, famous for his Benetton advertising campaigns. The museum circuit includes the Museum of the Mafia, situated in the former Jesuit College. This museum for the first of its kind (there will soon be another one in Las Vegas) presents a wealth of material in a series of highly original and arresting  presentations documenting the story of the criminal organization which has dominated Sicilian society for over a century.

Sgarbi hopes that this museum will attract tourists to Salemi, which has hitherto been left out of classic tourist itineraries. We hope that from now on, tour operators who take visitors to Noto and Piazza Armellino of two of Sicilys most famous sights  will also include Salemi, he says. Salemi, in fact, is one of Sicilys most beautiful old towns,with monuments dating back to the Norman period. It is also known for its Feast of San Giuseppe, when citizens set up elaborate shrines decorated with bread moulded into garlands of flowers, angels, animals and all kinds of fantastic forms.

For information: www.cittadisalemi.it