Born Joanne Stefani Germanotta, Lady Gaga was raised in Manhattan, but her melodramatic excess and sense of the theatrical baroque might spring from her Sicilian cultural matrix. Her grandfather came from Naso, a small, isolated, aristocratic town with 4,000 residents only an hour away from Messina.

“If it is true that Lady Gaga has such a strong connection to Sicily, she should visit Naso,” says Carmen Caliò, municipal secretary of Naso. The eccentric singer left a piece of her heart in Milan instead: during a concert, her new-found cousins were shown as a spectacle of dancing lights. “Maybe she should care more about her village of origin if she is truly tied to her roots,” Caliò insists.