The sound of the explosion at 5:58 p.m. on the A 29 near Capaci resembled a roar, witnesses said.

What remained was a huge crater in the asphalt.

The explosives had been detonated by remote detonation.

As ordered by mafia boss Totò Riina, the assassin watched the street from atop a hill in order to precisely time the moment when, on May 23, 1992, the column with judge Giovanni Falcone dropped the spot prepared with 500 kilos of TNT explosives happened.

23 people survived injured, Falcone and four of his companions were killed.

In Rome, where the judge worked at the time and was hardly guarded, it would have been easy to ambush him alone.

But the Cosa Nostra wanted to set an example on Sicilian soil with as many deaths as possible.

A little later, on July 19,

the anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino was also assassinated.

He was Falcone's friend and his most important ally.

Falcone's wife Francesca was in the car next to him

Karen Krueger

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Thirty years later, Italy has not forgotten them, although the country is slow to come to the full truth about the murders.

Every May, the anniversary of the "Capaci Massacre" commemorates Falcone, his tenacious and revolutionary anti-mafia fight, and the other victims: police officers Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo, Antonio Montinari and Falcone's second wife Francesca Morvillo, who was with was sitting in the car and the journalist Felice Cavallaro was reading the book “Francesca.

Storia di un amore in tempo di guerra" ("Francesca. The story of a love in times of war").

In Milan, too, the cultural scene is all about remembrance.

One night this week, at the sold-out Franco Parenti Theater, actor Dario Leone performs his breathtaking one-man play "Bum ha i piedi bruciati" ("Bum has burned feet").

Like many Italians of his generation, Leone, born in 1981, still remembers May 23, 1992. In Italy, the question “What were you doing when Falcone was murdered?” is part of the collective culture of remembrance.

At that time he had the feeling for the first time that something was being reported in the news that also concerned him, a child, the actor said recently.

Over the years, the need grew to tell the story of Falcone and Borsellino, who played football together as boys in Palermo and later set up the first anti-mafia unit there.

Leone studied writings, speeches, articles, interviews and testimonies by and about Falcone and was inspired by Luigi Garlando's book "Per questo mi chiamo Giovanni" ("That's why my name is Giovanni").

The result is a play that enlightens with a crescendo of narratives about the mafia, honors the work of the murdered judges, and portrays Falcone in a profound and sensitive way.

The Giovanni Falcone Foundation, headed by Maria Falcone, supports the production.

In 2020, the sister of the anti-mafia judge tried in vain to take legal action against a Frankfurt pizzeria that called itself "Falcone &

Borsellino”, advertised with a menu with bullet holes and had a photo of Marlon Brando as godfather next to a picture of the Mafia investigators.

Maria Falcone saw their reputation tarnished.

Perhaps the judges would have agreed had they seen Leone's play.

The mafia has become part of the Sicilian landscape

For his story, he slips into the role of a small shopkeeper from Palermo who, like his father and forefathers, cedes money to the mafia every month.

He only finds the strength to rebel when “Giovanni”, as he consistently calls Falcone, fundamentally changes society's view of the mafia.

“In Palermo,” he says on stage and with a Sicilian tongue, “there is a just law and an unjust law.

The latter has existed in Sicily for so long that it has become part of the landscape.

It's called Mafia.” The set consists of a few moving elements, which over the next two hours are transformed into streets, courtrooms and the Sicilian beach (Falcone loved the sea, he went there on May 23) and become a projection screen for news material and photos from the archive.

“Giovanni was a kid like any other.

His favorite hero was Zorro,” says Leone, jumping up in a mock sword attack and shouting: “There are no invincible men!” Shortly thereafter, an old recording of Falcone's Rai fills the stage: “The mafia is man-made.

And like everything man-made, it has a beginning and will also have an end,” he says.

At the latest when Leone slips into the role of mafioso Tommaso Buscetta, Falcone's key witness in the Maxi trial, the hall holds its breath.

In the semi-darkness, his face dimly lit, he explains in a hoarse voice how the Cosa Nostra is organized in Sicily's cities.

There is standing applause at the end.

Also for Salvatore Borsellino, Paolo Borsellino's brother, who enters the stage deeply moved.

It's outrageous, says the 82-year-old

that Europe still hasn't found uniform legislation to combat organized crime.

"You will only defeat the evil Mafia if you take the laws of Italy as a model.

There must finally be an end to the downplaying of the mafia across Europe!”