
“To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the key to everything,” wrote Goethe, about 235 years ago. This still feels apt today, especially if you think of that key as one that unwinds a tightly coiled spool of crucial cultural and historical influences. Given that, to most people in the U.S., Sicily’s most famous figure, Vito Corleone, wasn’t even a real person, we all have a lot to learn.