Tarocco Siciliano

The Tarocco Siciliano is a tarot deck found in Sicily and used to play Sicilian tarocchi. It is one of the three traditional Latin-suited tarot decks still used for games in Italy, alongside the more widespread Tarocco Piemontese and the Tarocco Bolognese. Its design was heavily influenced by the Tarocco Bolognese and by the Minchiate. It also has a distinction among tarot packs, because it is the only surviving deck to use the Portuguese variation of the Latin suits of cups, coins, swords and clubs, a variation that died out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The deck is therefore both a living gaming tool for the tarocchi games of Sicily and a surviving example of a regional suit system that elsewhere disappeared.