The Sack of Palermo or scempio in Italian is the popular term for the construction boom from the 1950s through the mid-1980s that 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, severely damaged by Allied bombing raids in 1943, was allowed to crumble. The bombing condemned nearly 150,000 to live in crowded slums, shantytowns and even caves.
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Famous quotes containing the words sack of and/or sack:
“Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet,
The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,
Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves,
Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales,
Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.”
—Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943)
“You can’t divide a business like a sack of apples.”
—Edward L. Bernds (b. 1911)