Old Mafia lairs now peaceful Sicily B&Bs

It could have been the rural retreat of a hedge-fund magnate or an Italian prince: a two-story villa of beige stucco and stone, perched in isolation on a rise overlooking the Jato Valley in northern Sicily. The front doors opened onto a refurbished dining room with high ceilings, terra-cotta tile floors and a row of stone arches that suggested a Roman amphitheater. Soft light filtered through the windows.

It was getting toward lunch, and in the spacious kitchen, three chefs were preparing dessert: miniature pastries made with honey and chestnuts cultivated in nearby orchards. A narrow staircase wound upstairs to the villa's three rustic bedrooms, with 10 beds, each of which looked out upon pale-green meadows sloping upward toward baldfaced granite mountains.

In fact, this 17th-century farmhouse once belonged to Bernardo Brusca, the "capo" (head) of one of Sicily's most brutal crime families. A member of the Cupola, the Palermo commission that directed operations and settled disputes within the Cosa Nostra, Brusca may well have used the place as a safe house from which to plan killings and other crimes throughout Italy.

Brusca's son, Giovanni, now 51, detonated the bomb that blew up the Italian prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in 1992; the next year, he kidnapped the 11-year-old son of a Mafia informer, held him for 26 months, then strangled him and dissolved his body in a barrel of acid. The younger Brusca later turned state's evidence and went into a witness-protection program. His father, a member of the Mafia old school that swore by "omerta," organized crime's code of silence, was captured in the 1980s, sentenced to multiple life terms for a string of murders, and died in government custody in 2004.

Properties seized

Acting under a law passed in 1996, the Italian government seized his properties and turned the farmhouse over to a consortium of municipalities in the area. Cooperativo Placido Rizzotto, a group named after a labor leader who was shot dead by the Mafia in 1948, was given the house six years ago. The cooperative now runs the property as a bed-and-breakfast and has turned Brusca's neglected, overgrown fields into an organic-farming commune.

"All the municipalities in the area were part of a long, violent Mafioso history that they wanted to leave behind," said Emiliano Rocchi, the head chef, who has worked there since the inn opened in 2004. "Turning these Mafia properties into socially beneficial projects is a way of doing that."

The Brusca house, known as the Agriturismo Portella della Ginestra, was the first such Mafia property in Sicily to become a bed-and-breakfast, and it may have started a trend. Libera Terra Mediterraneo, an umbrella group of cooperatives founded a decade ago by an Italian priest, recently opened a second inn — once owned by the Sicilian boss of bosses, Salvatore Riina — across the Jato Valley and has announced plans for more. These former Mafia villas offer guests a chance to soak up the island's most beautiful landscapes — and, perhaps, get a frisson of horror and excitement overnighting in places filled with ghosts from Sicily's criminal past.

At Portella della Ginestra, where Mafiosi allegedly once gathered, tourists dine on such exquisite dishes as Pasta alla Norma, made with a sauce of fresh tomatoes, eggplant, basil and pecorino cheese, and zucchini in a beer batter. The wine, which bears the Centopassi label, is made from grapes cultivated in local vineyards that were once Mafia-owned. Fields that were overgrown with weeds have been replanted with chick peas, tomatoes, wheat and other crops, and are threaded with riding and hiking trails.

The village of Piana degli Albanesi, a five-minute drive from the inn, is well worth an afternoon visit. Settled by Albanian refugees five centuries ago, the village is home to a community of 4,000 of their descendants, who have maintained their culture and language. It's a perfectly preserved Renaissance-era town, with cobblestone alleys winding up steep hillsides, several beautiful churches and stunning views of the Jato Valley below.

"Godfather" connection

Across the valley is the mountain town of Corleone, which gave its name to Mario Puzo's crime family in his epic novel "The Godfather." Corleone was also the domain of Riina, nicknamed Toto and otherwise known as "The Beast" or "The Short One"; for decades he was the fugitive "capo di tutti capi" of the Sicilian Mafia.

A diminutive killer who personally gave the orders for the murders of magistrates, policemen and scores of rival Mafiosi, Riina was captured near his villa in Palermo in May 1993 after 23 years on the run. He is now in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison outside Milan.

Riina had a rustic property of his own about five miles outside of Corleone; his farmhouse was turned over to the Corleone municipal government, renovated with European Union funding and opened in April as the second bed-and-breakfast in the Libera Terra group.

Adjoined by more than 100 acres of farmland and pasture, that property, Agriturismo Terre Di Corleone, is down a precipitous gravel path, tucked out of sight from the main road.

A handsome stone farmhouse, perched on a rise over cactus groves and stony meadows, has been turned into a dining room; it seats 70 people and serves organic dishes with ingredients produced almost exclusively on Libera Terra farmland. A path above the restaurant leads to Riina's former stables, now the hotel: five comfortable rooms with 16 beds, looking out on a bamboo-covered veranda and the Jato Valley beyond.

The estate's isolation would have offered Riina a perfect environment to hide from the authorities and plot his reign of terror, but whether it was actually used by the capo has never been ascertained. "We know that Riina owned the place, from the property records at the Corleone municipality, and that his family cultivated the fields here," said Francesco Galante of Libera Terra, "but we don't have evidence that Riina ever came here personally."

There's no doubt, however, that Riina and his fellow Mafia chieftains maintained near total control of the surrounding area, and that the bed-and-breakfasts and similar projects are helping to break that domination.

"The people from the surrounding towns now get to choose where they work," said Galante. "They no longer depend on the favor of Mafia firms or Mafia-connected businessmen. They feel the difference."

It is a difference that visitors will feel as well, as they sip fine wine in rustic splendor and contemplate the villainy of the men who once ruled this corner of Italy.