Flag of Sicily
flag of the Italian region of Sicily
The flag of Sicily shows a triskeles symbol (a figure of three legs arranged in rotational symmetry), and at its center a Gorgoneion (depiction of the head of Medusa) with a pair of wings and three wheat ears.
In the original flag, the wheat ears did not exist and the colors were reversed. The original flag was created in 1282 during the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers.
Description
The flag is characterized by the presence of the triskeles in its middle formed by the winged head of a woman (Hybla, goddess of fertility among the ancient Sicilian people), head topped with a knot of snakes and three wheat ears, from which three bent legs radiate, as if seized in mid-race, representing the extreme fertility of the land of Sicily. The triskelion symbol is said to represent the three capes (headlands or promontories of the island of Sicily), namely: Pelorus (Peloro, Tip of Faro, Messina: North-East); Pachynus (Passero, Syracuse: South); and Lilybæum (Lilibeo, Cape Boeo, Marsala: West), which form three points of a triangle from the historical three valli of the island.
The flag is bisected diagonally into regions coloured red and yellow. Those colours were first adopted after the revolution of the Sicilian Vespers in order to symbolise loyalty to the Aragonese party.
History
The Triskeles-with-Gorgoneion symbol is found in antiquity, depicted on coins minted in Syracuse in the 4th century BC.
The emblem was included in the design of the Army Gold Medal awarded to British Army majors and above who had taken a key part in the Battle of Maida (1806).
It was used in combination with the Italian tricolore in the Sicilian revolution of 1848.
It was at this time referred to as "the sign of the Trinacria", Sicily being referred to by its ancient name,
Trinacria ("having three headlands").
“Flag of Sicily” enters the record as flag of the Italian region of Sicily. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Flag, Sicily and flag can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59921. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1282, 1806 and 1848.
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This entry incorporates text from “Flag of Sicily” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.