Piazza Armerina and the first bikini in history
Holger Uwe Schmitt - CC4.0
The Bikini was notoriously born in France in 1946, but few know that in Sicily it was already used in the I-II second AD.
This is revealed to us by the splendid mosaics of the Villa del Casale in Piazza Armerina: the mosaic of the Girls in Bikinis portrays, on two registers, ten girls engaged in athletic exercises wearing bikinis.
It was not until July 5, 1946 that this garment was given the name bikini. The French tailor Louis Réard, who launched the bikini fashion, named this garment in this way because at that time the Americans were carrying out nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall and Réard Islands. The fashion of the Bikini was in fact explosive just like the atoll.
