Salvatore Lima - Mayor of Palermo

Mayor of Palermo

From 1958 to 1963 Salvo Lima was mayor of Palermo and fellow Christian Democrat Vito Ciancimino assessor for public works. Between 1951 and 1961 the population of Palermo had risen by 100,000. Under Lima and Ciancimino an unprecedented construction boom hit the city. They supported Mafia-allied building contractors such as Palermo’s leading construction entrepreneur Francesco Vassallo – a former cart driver hauling sand and stone in a poor district of Palermo. Vassallo was connected to mafiosi like Angelo La Barbera and Tommaso Buscetta. In five years, over 4,000 building licences were signed, more than half of them in the names of three pensioners who had no connection with construction at all.

This period was later referred to as the "Sack of Palermo" because the construction boom led to the destruction of the city's green belt, and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks. In the meantime Palermo’s historical centre was allowed to crumble. In 1964, during an investigation, Lima had to admit that he knew Angelo La Barbera, one of Palermo's most powerful mobsters. Lima's election was supported by the La Barbera clan. From 1965-1968 Lima again was mayor of Palermo.

Lima arranged an unusually lucrative concession to collect taxes in Sicily to Antonio Salvo and Ignazio Salvo, two wealthy mafia-cousins from the town of Salemi in the province of Trapani, in exchange for their loyalty to Salvo Lima and the Andreotti faction of the DC. The Salvo’s were allowed 10 percent of the take – three times as much as the national average of 3.3 percent.