Cities join forces to turn away crime tourists
Cities made famous for their dark criminal underbellies are working together to turn around their reputation – and turn away hordes of crime tourists.
Medellin and Palermo, made famous by television series and films such as Narcos and The Godfather, have joined forces to shake their reputations as underworld hubs harbouring drug cartels and mafia dons.
Medellin has long been known for its drug kingpins like Pablo Escobar, who murdered police by the hundreds, while in Sicily’s Palermo, mob bosses like Toto ‘‘The Beast’’ Riina assassinated rivals and dissolved their relatives in acid.
But last week the two mayors met in Colombia to witness the demolition of Escobar’s former home, the Monaco Building, where tourists flocked for selfies.
‘‘What is fantastic is the positive connection between our cities today is the exact opposite of the historical connection when they were the capitals of mafia and narcotrafficking,’’ Leoluca Orlando, the Palermo mayor, told The Sunday Telegraph after meeting Federico Gutierrez.
Orlando, 71, was personally invited to Medellin to witness the demolition. ‘‘It was a moment of tremendous emotion. The building just disappeared. When the dust arrived 20 seconds later, the message was clear: change is possible,’’ Orlando said. ‘‘You know, there is an old Sicilian saying, ‘who is born round cannot die square’. But it is wrong. It is possible to change.’’
In the Eighties and Nineties, Medellin was considered the world’s murder capital. Today, violent crime has plummeted and the city is a poster child for urban renewal. The Sicilian capital, Palermo, traditional home of the Cosa Nostra, just celebrated a year as the Italian cultural capital and is now a popular stop for cruise ship passengers who stroll through the streets and markets of the historical centre once controlled by the mob.
New crime statistics released last month by the Italian National Institute of Statistics ranked Palermo the safest city in Italy.
But despite this progress, popular TV dramas like Narcos still inspire crime tourists. In Medellin $50 buys a ‘‘narcotour’’ of Pablo Escobar’s grave, the roof where he was killed, and until last week, his residence now turned to rubble. But these tours often gloss over decades of murderous brutality toward those who defied the criminal groups. Now a memorial park honouring Medellin’s more than 46,000 narcotrafficking victims is planned for where Escobar’s home stood.
In Sicily, they trek to locations where real and fictional mob bosses lived and died. In Palermo, guides offer tours to popular locations, like Teatro Massimo where scenes from The Godfather were shot, but also alternative tours to memorials honouring those who died fighting organised crime. – Telegraph Group