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VISITING PALERMO
Among the most important tourist attractions of Palermo
are the city's Norman Cathedrae and the
Saracen-Norman-Spanish Palazzo Reale (or Palazzo
dei Normanni), a former royal palace added to and altered
over the centuries, and now the seat of the local
parliament. You can visit parts of the latter building,
including the Cappella Palatina, an exquisite
chapel containing rich mosaics. Other sights include La Martorana, a splendid Norman church with a Baroque
facade ,the imposing Teatro Massimo and Vucciria
market (which features heavily in Peter Robb's
Midnight in Sicily). Plays acted by marionettes are a
local tradition, and you can visit the Puppet Museum (Museo delle Marionette) to learn more about the history
of the art - and see a performance if you can.
Museums include the Galleria Regionale in Palazzo
Abatellis, and the fine Museo Archeologico Regionale,
which contains archaeological exhibits from from the
famous sites in western Sicily.
For those with more specialist interests (and strong
nerves) it's worth making a trip to the macabre Convent
dei Cappuccini's catacombs lined with the dead.
 THE
THEATRE Teatro Massimo On
the European scene, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo
represents the high point in the development of what is
generally considered to be the “Italian-style theatre”
into the “opera house” type, a process of development that
imbued the scene of operatic performances with elitist and
indeed even sacred qualities. There were two main lines of
development: one French, by Charles Garnier, that led to
the architecture of the Opera de Paris, and one German, by
way of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Gottfried Semper, that
led to Richard Wagner’s theatre at Bayreuth.
Basile had something in common with both these schools of
research. However, his prime interest was to perfect the
typical Italian model, concentrating on the development of
functional rationality, e.g. using traditional materials
but new construction systems - as at La Scala in Milan,
designed by Giuseppe Piermarini - and above all making use
of classical features. The classical world inspired Basile
in his use of the laws of harmony and balance in relation
to matters of proportion and size, where he was guided by
the strict laws of geometry of the ancient golden section:
Basile was thus able to combine his wide knowledge of
classical and ancient Sicilian architecture with
state-of-the-art technical and scientific know-how.
 The
Teatro Politeama Garibaldi is the first in order of
time of the great theatres constructed in Palermo during
the second half of the nineteenth century, as one of
numerous far-reaching town-planning projects. Designed by
Giuseppe Damiani Almeyda in 1867 and completed in 1891, it
dominates the square that was to become the heart of the
modern city, reflecting the felicitous condition of
artistic culture in Palermo and of the new bourgeois
governing class in Europe in general.
MUSEUMS
Regional
Archaeological Museum
Piazza Olivella
Dedicated to a
celebrated Palermo-born archaeologist, Antonio Salinas,
this is one of the most important archaeological museums
in all Italy, with a vast collection of unique
masterpieces that is fundamental to our knowledge of the
ancient history of western Sicily. The museum has been
housed since 1866 in an eighteenth-century former convent
belonging to the Philippine Fathers, next to the Church di
Sant’Ignazio all’Olivella. The rich collection includes
items discovered during excavations at Selinunte, Solunto,
Motya, Lilybaeum, and Tindari, and others acquired from
other important collections. There are exhibits dating
back to the Egyptian, Etruscan, Phoenician, Punic, Greek,
and Roman ages: epigraphs, vases, steles, sculptures,
funerary aedicules, architectural ornamentations, friezes,
and bas-reliefs. On the ground floor, the items are
displayed in two late-Renaissance cloisters, where some
underwater finds are also to be seen. Of particular note
are: the Stone of Palermo (a basalt inscription that is
essential for our reconstruction of the history of ancient
Egypt), a votive stele dedicated to the Phoenician god Ba’
al Hammon (IV-III century BC), two large statues of Zeus
(II century BC), the Tavola Selinuntina, and the two
splendid metopes from Temples C and E at Selinunte (IV and
V century BC). On the first floor we can see a bronze
Roman copy of the sculpture Athlete Slaying a Deer (from
the school of Lysippus), a marble Roman copy of
Praxiteles’ Satyr Pouring, a magnificent bronze Ram, and
hundreds of little terracotta statues from the sanctuary
of Malophoros. On the second floor there is a collection
of prehistoric material discovered in caves and sites in
western Sicily, a fine collection of Greek ceramics dating
back to the VI century BC (from Agrigento, Selinunte, and
Gela), and three polychrome mosaics discovered in Roman
houses of the Imperial Age in Palermo, at Piazza Vittoria.
 Sicilian
Regional Gallery
Palazzo Abatellis, Via
Alloro 4
Housed in a magnificent
fifteenth-century building, the Sicilian Regional Gallery
contains a rich collection of paintings and sculptures,
mainly by Sicilian artists, dating from the Middle Ages to
the eighteenth century. Among these works of art, which
originally belonged to private collections, there are
several world-renowned masterpieces. Palazzo Abatellis,
commissioned by Francesco Patella or Abatellis and built
in 1495 by the architect Matteo Carnelivari, is
characterized by the three-light windows in the facade,
two crenellated towers, and a massive Gothic-Catalan
portal. The visitor’s route through the Gallery, as
conceived in the 1950s by the architect Carlo Scarpa,
starts in the wide central atrium, with its fine loggia.
Among the most significant works of art there are: a vast
fifteenth-century fresco, The Triumph of Death, an example
of international Gothic attributed by some critics to
Pisanello; a famous marble bust of Eleanor of Aragon, by
Francesco Laurana (XV century); a painting representing La
Madonna degli Anzaloni, by Antonello Gagini (XV century);
a painting of Our Lady of the Annunciation, by Antonello
da Messina (XV century); and the Flight into Egypt, by
Vincenzo da Pavia (XVI century). There are also numerous
decorated wooden crucifixes, triptychs, and polyptychs,
some by Flemish artists active in Sicily (including a
triptych representing the Madonna and Child with sts by
Jean Gossaert, also known as Mabuse), all of which testify
to the development and relationship of Sicilian painting
schools with those in other parts of Italy and Europe. The
visit terminates with works of art by famous seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century artists such as Pietro Novelli,
Vito D’Anna, Luca Giordano, Mattia Preti, and the painter
known as “lo Spagnoletto”.
Diocesan
Museum
Palazzo Arcivescovile, Via
Matteo Bonello
 This Museum integrates
the Palazzo Abatellis picture-gallery. It is located in
the Palazzo Arcivescovile (Archbishop’s Palace), a
construction in Gothic-Catalan style built in 1460 but
altered on various occasions between the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries. The Museum contains paintings and
sculptures by leading Sicilian artists. Most of the
exhibits come from churches that have either been
deconsecrated or damaged in some way. The items include
the Cathedral’s original retable and ceiling canvases from
the now-destroyed Chiesa dell’Annunziata. There are also
triptychs of the twelfth-fifteenth century; paintings by
Vincenzo da Pavia, Pietro Ruzzolone, Riccardo Quartararo,
Tommaso de Vigilia, the Cripple of Gangi, and Pietro
Novelli; various works with images of Santa Rosalia;
paintings by Giorgio Vasari and Luca Giordano; Sicilian
Renaissance sculptures of the Gagini school; and the
celebrated knight’s tombstone, possibly by Francesco
Laurana.
Ignazio
Mormino Museum of Art and Archaeology
Via Liberta' 52
 Instituted by the Banco
di Sicilia Foundation, this Museum is located in the
eighteenth-century Villa Zito (restructured a century
later). It possesses an extensive collection of
archaeological items, majolica works, prints, paintings,
coins, and postage stamps. The archaeological finds,
mostly from Selinunte - discovered during excavations
financed by the Banco di Sicilia in the 1960s - are
particularly noteworthy: weapons, necklaces, unguentaria (flasks),
pottery (including Attic and Corinthian black- and
red-figure vases), white-background polychrome vases,
vases from local Sicilian workshops, and terracotta
statuettes. The majolica items include a number of
Renaissance pieces from Italian, Spanish, Islamic, and
Chinese workshops. The print collection presents a wide
selection of seventeenth-, eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century engravings representing Sicilian
subjects. The numismatic collection consists of a
veritable multitude of coins struck between 1282 and 1836.
The philatelic collection includes a unique possession:
all the issues of the Kingdom of Sicily, including the
stamps engraved by Tommaso Aloisio Juvara. On display in
the picture-gallery are about a hundred paintings by
leading nineteenth-century Sicilian landscape painters.
There is also a rich library with over 55,000 volumes,
mostly dealing with topics related to Sicily.
Palazzo Mirto Museum
Via Merlo
This is a rare example
of a noble palace that has preserved its original
structure and furnishings practically intact. It has
belonged to the Sicilian Region since the year 1982. In
the seventeenth century, the Palace became the property of
the Filangeri family and it was enlarged to incorporate
other older constructions, and in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries it was further amply restructured in
late-baroque style. A broad stairway leads to a succession
of elegant rooms, including: the Novelli room (with a
portrait by the famous painter); the little Chinese-style
drawing-room with lacquered wooden furniture in exotic
style; the tapestry room, decorated by Giuseppe Velasco,
with tapestries dating from the sixteenth to the
nineteenth centuries; the baldachin room, with paintings
by Velasco and Elia Interguglielmi; a little room with
items of archaeological interest; the Pompadour
drawing-room, with views of Rome; and a splendid
dining-room. All the rooms have precious Louis XV, Louis
XVI, and Empire-style furniture. On the terrace is a
spectacular nymphaeum with rococo decorations.
Palaeontological
Museum
Corso Tukory 131
This Museum is dedicated
to the Sicilian mineralogist and geologist Gaetano Giorgio
Gemellaro, who was responsible for its institution in
1861. It is housed in an early twentieth-century building
and is the property of the University of Palermo Natural
Sciences Faculty. The Museum contains an extremely
interesting collection of exhibits, all from Sicily,
ranging from Quaternary fossil fragments to remains of
fauna and Palaeolithic marine conglomerates. Of particular
interest is the collection of dwarf elephant remains,
dating back some 1,800,000 years, as also the skeleton of
a female specimen of homo sapiens, together with her stone
implements, found near Messina.
Risorgimento Museum
Piazza San Domenico
This Museum belongs to
the Societa' Siciliana per la Storia Patria (Sicilian
Historical Society), instituted in 1873, and is located in
the former convent of the Church of San Domenico. The
rooms of the Museum overlook the church’s beautiful
fourteenth-century cloister. Founded in 1918, the Museum
possesses numerous interesting historical testimonies of
the Italian Risorgimento - portraits of the Bourbon kings,
weapons that once belonged to Garibaldi, contemporary
prints, and other memorabilia. Among the works of art on
show are: two statues by Mario Rutelli representing
respectively Francesco Crispi and Garibaldi on horseback;
a bust of Garibaldi by Benedetto De Lisi; a sketch for the
equestrian monument of King Victor Emanuel II; and a bust
of Giuseppe Mazzini by Benedetto Civiletti.
International
Puppet Museum
Vicolo Niscemi
Located on the piano nobile
of the eighteenth-century Palazzo Massa-Pojero, this
Museum is the brainchild of Antonio Pasqualino, a Palermo
professor who over the years collected a vast number of
puppets from Palermo, Catania, and Naples together with
marionettes, hand-puppets, animated figures, and stage
equipment from all over the world. Particularly
interesting are the marionette-masks from Africa and Bali,
a wooden orchestra covered in gold foil from Burma, and
marionettes designed by contemporary artists such as
Guttuso, Baj, and Kantor. The Museum runs a busy program
of teaching activities, research, and performances,
plus an annual international festival.
HISTORICAL AND
MONUMENTAL SPACES
 The
Atrium of Palazzo Bonagia
One of Sicily’s finest
testimonies of baroque art, this spectacular atrium is
used in summer for shows, concerts, and other cultural
events. It is located in Via Alloro (in the heart of the
Kalsa quarter), i.e. a street which in the eighteenth
century, together with Via Lungarini, was the one with the
most splendid homes of the Palermo aristocracy.
Palazzo Castel di Mirto Bonagia belonged to the Stella e
Valguarnera family, dukes of Castel di Mirto and barons of
Bonagia. In 1750 Nicolo Palma refurbished the facade
overlooking the street, and eight years later Andrea
Gigante designed the atrium with a most original great
stairway in red marble, screened by an elegant Serlian
window, i.e. a tripartite space with trabeated lateral
apertures and a central arch supported by columns; the
arch was topped by an agile balustrade (of which a
fragment still remains), while the entire atrium was
decorated with delightful rococo-type stuccoes. The palace
was badly damaged by bombs in the Second World War and by
an earthquake in 1968.
The shows and concerts, all performed in the open air,
take place in the outer courtyard. There is seating for an
audience of up to two hundred. The spectacular backdrop is
provided by the red marble double stairway which at the
far end of the atrium was a foretaste of the splendor of
the inner rooms.
 The
Sant’Anna la Misericordia Complex
Located in the heart of the old city centre, near the
ancient Lattarini market, the Sant’Anna la Misericordia
complex is made up of the former Franciscan convent of the
Chiesa di Sant’Anna, one of Palermo’s most spectacular
baroque churches, and the adjacent Palazzo Bonet, which
stands opposite Piazza Croce dei Vespri and the
eighteenth-century Palazzo Gangi-Valguarnera.
This is the most extensive restoration project to be
undertaken in the old city centre since the end of the
war, a work of exceptional historical and architectural
importance comprising buildings dating from the fifteenth
to the seventeenth centuries and soon to become the new
seat of Empedocle Restivo Civic Gallery of Modern Art,
which since its creation (almost a century ago) has been
housed in the Foyer of the Teatro Politeama. The Museum
will be on three floors, with an overall internal and
external floor area of some 4700 square metres.
The Sant’Anna complex conserves the features of late
fifteenth-century residential architecture in
Gothic-Catalan style, some of the original two-light
windows having been restored to their original form
(Palazzo Bonet); there is also a seventeenth-century
convent building, at the heart of which there is a
magnificent quadrangular cloister with grey marble columns
and round arches, preceded by an early seventeenth-century
mannerist-style porch way.
The Santa Maria di Montevergini Complex
This complex consists of the seventeenth-century Chiesa di
Santa Maria di Montevergini, plus an extensive part of the
convent, which dates from the fifteenth century. It is
located in a delightful little square to the rear of the
Cathedral, a few steps away from Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
Work on the church began in 1687, to the design of the
Jesuit architect Lorenzo Cipri, followed six years later
by Andrea Palma. To him we owe the decorative sculptures
on the facade and the interior walls, as also the overall
design of the fresco panels below the choir and in the
vault, which are the work of the Flemish painter Wilhelm
Borremans (1721). The campanile, with its little majolica
cupola, was constructed to the right of the main facade in
1716, to the design of the Crucifer Father Giuseppe
Mariani. Other work was carried in the late eighteenth
century and the first half of the nineteenth, the
reconstruction of the dome in neoclassical style and on a
larger scale, to the design of the Engineer Royal, Luigi
Del Frago. These alterations were completed in 1802 with a
series of monochromatic frescos by Giuseppe Velasco, which
replaced those of Antonino Grano (1704).
The church has now been restructured and restored to
create a module-type theatre facility with a stage and
seating capacity for an audience of two hundred, in what
the Mayor of Palermo has defined “Palermo’s home theatre”.
Close by, in the convent area, an atelier has been created
for exhibitions and recitals, plus an open-air wine bar.
The Old Railway Engine Depot at Sant’Erasmo
The old railway engine depot in Via Messina Marine, near
the little port of Sant’Erasmo, is an interesting example
of industrial archaeology that has been recovered by the
municipal authorities and is now utilized as a highly
functional venue for cultural events (exhibitions,
concerts, shows). It consists of an elegant main pavilion,
48 metres long and 30 wide, and a small services building
standing adjacent.
A striking feature of the internal structure of the
depot’s central body is its system of pillars and
capitals. The whole area is roofed over by an unusual
network of steel trusses, sloping gradually down. Other
characteristic features are the cast-iron pillars, all now
realigned and renovated, and the flooring of the outside
forecourt in great slabs of Billiemi marble.
The old railway station depot dates from the late
nineteenth century, when it was built for the narrow-gauge
railway line from Palermo to Corleone, of which the
section from Palermo to Villafrati came into service in
June 1886, a few days after the inauguration of Palermo
Central Station. The great pavilion, in certain periods,
very likely had a dual purpose, i.e. that of goods and
passenger station and that of railway station depot.
 The
Zisa Garden
A space made to measure for everyone, steeped in history,
amid Mediterranean vegetation and plashing fountains. This
fragment of the legendary, vast Genoard (“Paradise on
Earth”) of Norman times, a great royal hunting park dating
from the twelfth century, constitutes the spectacular
entrance to the palace known as la Zisa (from the Arabic
al-aziz, “the magnificent”), a sumptuous summer residence
built by William I and William II between 1165 and 1180.
The Zisa today presents the original Islamic-style design,
except for a few modern features such as the irrigation
network and the illumination system, with its 236 lights.
The central element is a great pool of water, stretching
some 130 metres. The whole complex covers 30,000 square
metres, interspersed with pathways and flowerbeds
containing over 60 varieties of plants: shrubs, creepers,
bushes, and assorted flowers, with due tribute being paid
to the typical fragrances of the Mediterranean, from
orange and lemon blossom to laurel. The various items
recovered include thirteen dammusi, little masonry
structures built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
when la Zisa was used for agricultural purposes - now they
act as information offices and visitor reception
facilities.
 The
Foro Italico Lawn
A seaside terrace with a grass lawn covering 40,000 square
metres, plus pathways, benches, ornamental items, a
cycling track, and its own illumination system (with 300
lights) and special night-time effects. The Foro Italico
lawn – which stretches out where used to be masses of
rubble and other waste material left over from bomb damage
in the Second World War – links the splendid view of the
Gulf of Palermo with the surrounding city network of
streets around the Kalsa, Palermo’s most ancient quarter,
rich in historical and architectural testimonies.
The common denominator of the art decoration, the
brainchild of the celebrated designer Italo Rota, is
ceramics, a leading feature of Sicilian handicraft. Two
golden “totems” over two metres tall stand at the start of
the central avenue leading from Foro Umberto I down to the
sea, like a sort of entrance doorway. Fifteen others, all
coloured and sculpted, with a two-faced effigy and relief
work representing Mediterranean flora and fauna (grapes,
octopuses, etc.), flank the sides of the central corridor.
Also made of ceramics are the tiles – each presenting a
white background and a central coloured circle – covering
the 57 benches in the great “square” overlooking the gulf,
with an overall area of 2300 square metres. Acting as
bollards, 1400 ceramic figures mark off the road around
the edge of the lawn – these are reproductions of the
profile of the celebrated bust of Eleanor of Aragon, the
masterpiece of Francesco Laurana (1477).
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