Sicily is the big island at the bottom of Italy — the one the boot of Italy looks like it is kicking. It is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and it is part of Italy, but Sicilians often talk about "Italy" as if it were somewhere else, the way people on a big island sometimes do. The main city is Palermo. It is hot, dry in summer, and famous for food (oranges, lemons, fish, very sweet cakes), for the volcano Mount Etna, which still smokes and sometimes throws out fire, and for its very long history: Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans and Spanish all ruled it, and you can still see all of them in the buildings and even in the food. In English, though, there is one more thing the name carries: the mafia. Sicily is where the mafia began, and because of films like The Godfather, many English speakers hear "Sicily" and think first of crime families, silence, and revenge. That is a real part of the island's history and it still matters there today — but it is worth knowing that this is a small part of a big place, and that saying it to a Sicilian person as a joke would not be funny. The adjective and the word for a person from there is Sicilian: Sicilian food, a Sicilian friend.