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Franca Florio (1873-1950), descendant of a aristocratic Sicilian family, was married with Ignazio Florio junior, the most important and rich man of Sicily during the period “belle époque”, in the XX century.

Biography
In a few years, Franca became the most appreciate and loved woman in Palermo, not only for her beauty but also for her way of being, kindness, intelligence and wisdom, qualities that not all of them often reside in one person, but that she attended all. The beautiful Franca played a key role in managing the family’s economy, consisting in banks, factories, shipyards, foundries, tuna, salt, wine cellars (the famous Marsala) and, above all, one of the largest fleets in Europe, the Società di Navigazione Italiana (Italian Navigation Company). The Florio family’s dream was to give to Palermo and Sicily an European face, and it is for this reason that the couple shook friendships and relationships of some significance, in which Franca played a very important role. Puccini, Leoncavallo, Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Montesquieu, a host of illustrious artists, including Boldini and De Maria Bergler, members of the highest Italian aristocracy as the Duke Sforza Cesarini and other characters of the most important on the international scene. All enthralled by her charm: such as Gabriele D'Annunzio and even the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. The jewels of Franca Florio were created especially for her, from the best jewelers in the world, like Cartier and Lalique, which sent mind-boggling staggering accounts to Florio. Among them, the famous " Florio’s pearl necklace," a majestic jewel, very long, which counted 365 beads of enviable caliber, enough heavy and majestic to embarrass the Queen of Italy who owned a pearl necklace, but not up to par. It is narrated that, as a jealous sicilian husband, when the painter Boldini sketched Donna Franca in all her beauty and charm with a little dropped strap and uncovered ankles (portrait that is in Palermo in Villa Igiea, built by the Architect Basile, the great supporter of Sicilian Liberty for the family), Ignazio Florio claims lengthening the dress and the uplifted strap, because in an attitude, he said, too provocative and objectionable to a noblewoman. her husband’s jealousy and betrayals, however, were not the real worry of Franca, but the death of his sons: the eldest daughter Giovanna, died of meningitis at the age of only nine. Ignazio, affectionately called baby boy, the only male heir, died the following year and Giacobbina, born nine months after, lived only an hour. The only remaining daughters were Igiea and Giulia, but as females, in those days, they were not considered suitable to deal with the economy. So it was that little by little, in the late '20s and mid '30s, at home Florio there was the economic collapse, caused perhaps by the unbridled luxury and the inability to renew strategies. Adverse situations and the pain had changed the face of "Bella Franca" who nonetheless ended his life with dignity, amid hardships and pains, soothed by the joys that the beloved daughters and grandchildren gave her. Franca Florio died in 1950, at 77 years in Villa Salviati's daughter Igiea.