expanded outside the old city walls, mostly to the north along the new boulevards Via Roma, Via Dante, Via Notarbartolo, and Viale della Libertà. These roads would soon boast a huge number of villas in the Art Nouveau style. Many of these were designed by the architect Ernesto Basile. The Grand Hotel Villa Igiea, designed by Ernesto Basile for the Florio family, is a good example of Palermitan Art Nouveau. The huge Teatro Massimo was designed in the same period by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, Ernesto's father, and built by the Rutelli & Machì building firm of the industrial and old Rutelli Italian family in Palermo, and was opened in 1897. The second world war During the Second World War, Palermo was heavily bombed by the Allied air forces in 1942 and 1943, until its capture during the Allied invasion of Sicily on 22 July 1943. The harbour (main objective of the air attacks) and the surrounding quarters were effectively destroyed, as was a considerable part of the city, with heavy civilian casualties. When American troops entered Palermo in 1943 they were greeted with "a thunderous welcome by what seemed the entire population demonstrating their feelings about Fascist rule." The two captured Italian generals claimed that they were happy because in their view "the Sicilians were not human beings but animals". Anti-Sicilian prejudice was part of the fascist regime's world view, being promoted by pro-fascist newspapers, particularly in the north of Italy. Italian Republic and today In 1946 the city was declared the seat of the Regional Parliament, as capital of a Special Status Region (1947) whose seat is in the Palazzo dei Normanni. A theme in the city's modern age has been the struggle against the Sicilian Mafia, Red Brigades and outlaws such as Salvatore Giuliano, who controlled the neighbouring area of Montelepre. The Italian state effectively has had to share control of the territory, economically and administratively, with the Mafia. The "Sack of Palermo" was one of the dramatic consequences of this problem. This popular term refers to the speculative building practices that resulted in the destruction of a great number of historical buildings and green areas in favour of poor buildings, mainly between the 1950s and the 1980s. The reduced importance of agriculture in the Sicilian economy has led to a massive migration to the cities, especially Palermo, which swelled in size, leading to rapid expansion towards