Borsellino was born in a middle-class Palermo neighbourhood, Kalsa, a neighborhood of central Palermo which suffered extensive destruction by aerial attacks during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. His father was a pharmacist and his mother ran a pharmacy in the Via della Vetriera, next to the house where Paolo was born. As boys Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone – later a magistrate, who was born in the same neighbourhood – played football together on the Piazza Magione. The Mafia was present in the area but quiescent. Both had classmates who ended up as "mafiosi". The house where he was born was declared unsafe and the family was forced to move out in 1956. The pharmacy remained, while the neighbourhood around it crumbled.