The shooting locations for Livatino – The Judge and His Assassins, the miniseries directed by Michele Placido and scheduled for prime time on Rai 1 on Monday, November 9 and Tuesday, November 10, 2026, are all closely tied to the life of the magistrate.
To convey the professional commitment and, above all, the human stature that led him to lose his life in a mafia attack, the production chose a quiet inland town, seats of power, expansive state roads set amid the Sicilian countryside, and numerous other sunlit corners of the island.
What it’s about
It is the Eighties, and in Sicily the judge Rosario Livatino (played by Giuseppe De Domenico) battles the mafia’s power, aiming above all at its economic interests and its deep-rooted presence on the ground. For this reason he soon attracts the attention of the Stiddari, who, in the meantime, are consolidating increasing power in the Agrigento area and in the neighboring provinces.
The Rai mini-fiction focuses in particular on the last two years of the magistrate’s life, who was the victim on September 21, 1990 of an ambush on the highway that connects Agrigento and Palermo, and on highlighting the profound moral qualities that made him a symbol in the fight against organized crime before his beatification (which took place in 2021: the same year in which, as Michele Placido has repeatedly recounted, the idea of a Rai fiction about the judge Livatino gained momentum).
Where the series was filmed
Produced by Rai Fiction with Goldenart Production and Rai Com, Livatino – The Judge and His Assassins was shot primarily in Sicily, at the real locations that marked the magistrate’s life. Placido himself highlighted the importance of the island’s light and its “stunning sunsets” in giving depth and emotional involvement to the fiction.
The shooting locations of the series cluster especially in the Province of Agrigento, where the anti-mafia judge lived and carried out the bulk of his work. Some scenes were filmed, for example, in Canicatti, a town in the inland part of Agrigento, once a stronghold of important noble families and still today among the region’s most important agricultural and wine-producing centers, where he was born and spent much of his life.
Other places where the Rai series about Rosario Livatino was filmed — which also features Nino Frassica as the magistrate’s elderly father — include Naro, Palma di Montechiaro, and Favara; these towns in the Agrigento area retain visible traces of the various dominations and eras, especially the medieval and Baroque, of Sicilian history. Palma di Montechiaro is also known as the Leopard City for its ties to the Tommasi di Lampedusa family and for having inspired the great Italian literary classic.
In Agrigento, among the locations is the Palazzo di Giustizia, frequented daily during his brief career by the magistrate.
Some scenes of the series were shot on the Statale 640 road that connects Agrigento and Porto Empedocle with Caltanissetta and, subsequently, with the Palermo junction: along this sun-drenched road, often known as the “Road of Writers” because it passes through places associated with some of Sicily’s most important writers, it was on that highway that Judge Livatino fell victim to the ambush planned by the Stidda.
