If it were to to write the Targa’s history, it should write many pages of episodes, contrasts, anxieties, triumphal successes, such as to fill a large volume.
Maybe such a work will be done by some historian passionate about the race, harvesting in my memories and in my memory.
Vincenzo Florio
In each town of the Madonie in the days before the Targa the auctioneers, complete with a trumpet and a drum, go slack to announce the danger … “mothers keep the children”, “Men tie up the animals”, “who dies dies and so much worse for him. The mayor does not pay anyone “, the priests in the churches call for caution and even distribute poetic proclamations …
“ fimmineddi e masculiddi,
neutrali e picciriddi,
quannu è ura de la Targa
vi consigghiu stari a larga,
si ‘na machina v’intruzza
fracassandovi ‘a cucuzza
un c’è tempo d’arrivari
per potervi cunfessari.
Puddicini e puddastreddi,
cani, porci e picurieddi,
Và ! Tinitili intappati
pe nun finiri scafazzati.
E perciò a mia sintiti :
da lì casi nun nisciti,
du balcuni la guardati
e l’nfernu vi scansati !”
In memory of Cecè and Silvana Paladino Florio. In 1840 Vincenzo Florio Sr., at the height of splendor of the numerous and still profitable family’s enterprises, commissioned his Paduan friend, the architect Carlo Giachery, to create an elegant and modern residence near its “tonnara” called Arenella, between Capo Zafferano and the gardens of Villa Igiea, […]
Sicily and the Targa Florio race, as Giovanni Agnelli remembers it. I have very beautiful memories of Sicily, old and new. Memories of a many places full of light, colors and scents, and refined people; I believe that no one in the world is a gentleman like a Sicilian gentleman; they are special people. And […]
November 23, 1919 only 100 years ago… The devastations and grief of the World War (1915-1918) certainly had not interrupted the feelings and passion that have always coursed through sports enthusiasts all over the world. It was the structure itself of the human soul to impose that after any type of trouble everything must pick […]
100 Years of Car Racing Images and videos of the Alfa Romeo legend An extraordinary event to remember the 100th anniversary of one of the oldest and most illustrious car races, created in 1906 and interrupted during the two world war periods. A probably unrepeatable event not so much for the presence of rare and […]
Great celebrations in Sicily for the 90th anniversary of the Targa Florio in May 1996. The Automobile Club of Palermo, at that time chaired by Tullio Laurìa, organized for the occasion a historical re-enactment of the mythical Sicilian race on those same hairpin bends of the Madonie that saw 10 times the stunning success of […]
The 1930 Targa race was one of the most exciting editions that ever took place on the Madonie. For some time, the expectations were for a fierce battle between the Bugatti cars, the favorites and many times champions on those mountain tracks, and the Alfa Romeo cars, recent stars of the Mille Miglia. The ever-increasing […]
The creators of the Florio “lineage”, brothers Paolo and Ignazio, were born in Calabria, in Bagnara. After the earthquake of 1783, they moved to Palermo and still very young opened a drugstore in Via Materassai as traders of spices, water, quinine, balms, ointments, and colonial goods. It was an attractive and flourishing trade for wise […]
In memory and honor of my old friend Nini Vaccarella who passed away on 23 September 2021. In 2015, in May, I was in Palermo to meet a few friends and organise a shipment from the Madonie. I invited my friends to dinner in Porticello, an old fishing village near Bagheria, and we met at […]