By Stefania Fumo

ROME, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Italy on Wednesday marked the 26th anniversary of the assassination of Judge Giovanni Falcone, who was blown up by the mafia along with his wife, also a magistrate, and three members of his security detail by a massive bomb that tore up a highway near the Sicilian city of Palermo on May 23, 1992.

Along with fellow prosecutor Paolo Borsellino, who was murdered along with five police officers just two months later and whose death was also commemorated on Wednesday, Falcone spearheaded efforts to prosecute the mafia with novel investigative strategies that led to a so-called "maxi-trial", resulted in hundreds of convictions and life sentences, and eventually revolutionized the Italian justice system's approach to organized crime.

"The memory of their commitment and sacrifice has become a part of the civil and democratic consciousness of our country," President Sergio Mattarella said in a message to the nation.

"The mafia pursued, and continues to pursue, subversive aims by inhuman means...The mafia will be defeated," said Mattarella, whose older brother, Piersanti, died in a mob ambush on his way to church in January 1980, while he was serving as governor of Sicily.

Falcone's death had huge repercussions in Italy, and made international headlines. Thousands of mourners crowded his funeral, while more than 10,000 people reportedly lined the streets outside to pay their respects to the Sicilian judge who had become a symbol of the island's hope of ridding itself of the mafia.

This year, 70,000 students took part in commemorative events promoted by the Ministry of Education across Italy, organizers said.

Over 1,000 students boarded the so-called "Ship of Legality", which departed from Civitavecchia port near Rome on Tuesday evening, after an address by Mattarella, and docked in Palermo this morning.

The students were taken to a day-long ceremony featuring government ministers, top judges and police officials, and relatives of the victims that was held in the courtroom where the "maxi-trial" took place in the 1980s.

After the ceremony, a march took off from the courtroom and ended at "Falcone's Tree", which grows in front of the house where the slain judge and his wife once lived. Over the decades, the tree has become a destination for generations of schoolchildren and thousands of people, who leave messages, letters, photos and drawings.

Participants held a minute of silence beginning at 17:58 local time, when the bomb that killed Falcone and the others exploded on this day, 26 years ago.