The 18th century palaces of Palermo

Hidden among the labyrinthine streets of Palermo are 18th century palaces with bizarre architectural flourishes, creating a stunning universe of beauty and baroque theatre of the spooky and wonderful.

Villa Palagonia “The monsters’ villa”

This mysterious place with-out equal once charmed Karl Friedrich Schinkel, an architect and traveler who influenced Prussian neoclassicism. The deliciously nightmarish decor inspired Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast. Legend has it that the cunning prince of Palagonia had the palace outfitted with a frieze of 600 monsters and chimeras in order to scare off some of his daughter’s suitors. “There are shepherds with donkey heads, young girls with horses' heads, cats with Capuchin bodies, two-headed children, four-armed solipeds”, wrote Alexandre Dumas. The most foolhardy courtiers fled from their own image reflected in the innumerable deforming mirrors of the ballroom. It’s a curiosity that, more than others, deserves to be called “madness”.

Bagheria, 15 km from Palermo

Palace of the Princes of Biscari

Facing the sea, the ceremonial salon opens to the terrace via a row of French windows decorated with sculptures of atlases and figures designed by Antonio Amato of Messina (1707). Goethe visited and admired the space during his “grand tour” of 1787. Further along, visitors enter the conversation room and the gallery of birds, paneled with shimmering plumage from imagined isles. A descendant of the princely Biscari family with the charming physique of Vittorio Gassman guides visitors through the palace, interjecting tasty anecdotes along the way. Private palace, visits by reservation only. On some evenings, the grand ballroom, decorated with frescoes by Sebastiano of Monaco, becomes host to a gala dinner with a concert. “The most beautiful interpretation of Rococo style in all of Sicily,” according to the historian Anthony Blunt.

Catania, 3 hours from Palermo

Chinese Villa

If the walls of this little Chinese-style estate, so popular in Europe in the 18th century, could talk, they would tell us of a thousand and one nights from China and long drunk evenings spent in this cozy nest by the Queen of Naples and Sicily Marie Caroline, older sister of Marie Antoinette. Imagine thousands of paper landers hung from the pagoda roofs, twinkling in the Eastern wind on an ink-black night. The extravagant home is filled with frescoes of Pompeiian and neo-classical ruins, with trompe l'oeil scenes depicting parade processions of mandarins wrapped in richly embroidered silks. This stylised escape is located just a few minutes from the center of town.

Palermo, Via Duca degli Abruzzi 1

Valgaurnera-Gangi Palace

Visitors contemplating the splendor of this palace run the risk of Stendhal Syndrome if they spend too long admiring its dynastic beauty, almost none of which has changed since 1750. The open double-glazed vault of the Hall of Mirrors, designed by prodigy Andrea Gigante, is enough to give one vertigo. It’s impossible not to waltz on the polychrome floor of the ballroom where Luchino Visconti created his masterpiece The Cheetah. Under the light of chandeliers with 102 branches stands the Pleyel piano on which Richard Wagner composed the beginning of Parsifal. Here, visitors are received by the princess Carine Vanni Valgaurnera Mantegna di Gangi, a true Signorilita. It’s possible to reserve the Gangi palace – Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent have hosted par-ties here fit for a prince.

Palermo, Piazza Croce dei Vespri 6