The Florios were the architects of the extraordinary cultural flowering that Palermo experienced during the Belle Époque. In their sumptuous and elegant villas, symbols of Art Nouveau in Palermo, they hosted illustrious personalities from all over the world: kings, queens, emperors, tsars, and czarinas.

The ‘Golden years of the Florio dynasty’ (Gli anni d’oro della dinastia dei Florio) retraces the salient stages in the lives of the illustrious personalities of a family that brought prestige to Sicily, in particular to Palermo, Marsala, and Favignana. We talk about it with the two authors: Silvia Maira and Serena Lo Pilato.

What do you think lies in the timeless appeal of the Florio dynasty and its appeal to contemporary readers?

The Florio family is remembered for giving Sicily a period of economic and cultural flourishing without precedent or equal in the future. Vincenzo Florio Senior and his son Ignazio were the true founders of an incredible economic empire that embraced different sectors. They were all-round entrepreneurs and innovators, gifted with extraordinary intuition in the economic and commercial field. Ignazio Junior, who took over the reins of the family, found himself managing a real holding company of vast dimensions at a very young age and, for various reasons, was not up to it.

However, he is remembered above all as Franca's often unfaithful husband. The couple were present in the most sought-after salons in the years of the Belle Époque and hosted princes, tsars and czarinas, illustrious men of letters, and exponents of the world of culture and art in their elegant residence. Franca's beauty was immortalized in famous paintings, and her story is that of a poor princess who became rich but was torn by immense pain.

Vincenzo Florio Junior, on the other hand, gave the Sicilians a sporting dream: the Targa Florio, an unprecedented automobile competition that attracted drivers from all over the world to the impervious Madonie circuit.

In summary, these are just a few elements that make the Florio family a legend, making it immortal and generating fascination in contemporary readers.

Were there any anecdotes that struck you the most during your research?

Several, one among many, for example, the bottle of Marsala Garibaldi Dolce that Vincenzo Florio Senior created for Giuseppe Garibaldi when he landed in Marsala in 1860.

Indeed, it seems that Garibaldi did not like to drink, and yet he appreciated Marsala, an amber-colored fortified wine.

And again, the affinity that existed in the management of the business between Vincenzo Florio Senior and Enrico Marone Cinzano, who bought the Florio winery, saving it from certain death.

Vincenzo Florio claimed that Marsala was made of wine and love. And Cinzano espoused that motto with the same entrepreneurial flair as the founder of that winery.

Also interesting and curious is the relationship “of cordial antipathy” between the two great women of the Belle Époque in Palermo, Franca Florio and Tina Scalia Whitaker, and the relationship between Franca Florio and the poet Gabriele d'Annunzio. He was enamored of the woman's beauty (and did nothing to hide it); she, on the other hand, was always on his side, sometimes flattered by his compliments, other times even annoyed.

How important was Donna Franca's “external” role in the Florio family?

If we wanted to use a modern term of comparison, today we could define Franca Florio as a public relations figure.

Franca was just that: an elegant and highly cultured woman, a perfect hostess who knew the ceremony of hospitality very well.

Suffice it to recall that she was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Helena.

But Franca was much more: she was also a charitable woman. Together with Ignazio, she had opened a canteen at Olivuzza that fed around 500 people; pregnant with Giulia, she did not hesitate to leave for Messina, devastated by the earthquake, as a relief worker.

As a Gabriele d'Annunzio scholar, I cannot help but ask you about your thoughts on his relationship with the Florios and how you decided to include him in your story.

The choice of quoting Gabriele d'Annunzio was Serena's, who conducted a study on the Taccuini (notebooks) in which the poet used to jot down thoughts, emotions, and events.

In these notebooks, he refers to his periods spent at “casa Florio.” The poet had a profound admiration for Franca, whom he called Unique. He said of her that she had a very elegant bearing or, to use his words, “that gait that the ancient Venetians called greyhound-like” and that the dangling earrings obscured the beauty of her face. He put his pen to the service of the newspaper 'L'Ora’.

May I ask you how the idea of collaborating was born, and about your future projects?

The idea of writing this book came from Serena, from her passion since the age of twelve for the history of the family, born thanks to an educational trip to the Florio places, and partly thanks to memories left to her by her great-grandfather, manager of the Florio winery for almost forty years.

Photos, information, and details she collected in an embryonic nucleus that became her eighth-grade thesis. Only later did she manifest a strong desire to continue studying the family history and to create a book, with the help of her mother, a writer of historical and contemporary novels and romantic comedies, that would not only talk about the extraordinary entrepreneurial skills of the Florios, founders of the economic empire, but also give space to the female figures in the family.

Serena's aim was to create an essay that, with simple language, would reach all readers, even the youngest or those wishing to approach the history of the family for the first time.

It is still early to talk about future collaborations, but some good ideas are there!