Villa Palagonia



The Villa Palagonia is a patrician villa in Bagheria, 15 km from Palermo, in Sicily, southern Italy. The villa itself, built from 1715 by the architect  Tommaso Napoli  with the help of Agatino Daidone, is one of the earliest examples of Sicilian Baroque. However, its popularity comes mainly from the statues of monsters with human faces that decorate its garden and its wall, and earned it the nickname of "The Villa of Monsters" (Villa dei Mostri).

This series of grotesques, created from 1749 by Francesco Ferdinando II Gravina, Prince of Palagonia, aroused the curiosity of the travellers of the Grand Tour during the 18th and 19th centuries, for instance Henry Swinburne, Patrick Brydone, John Soane, Goethe, the Count de Borde, the artist Jean-Pierre Houël or Alexandre Dumas, prior to fascinate surrealists like André Breton or contemporary authors such as Giovanni Macchia and Dominique Fernandez, or the painter Renato Guttuso.

In 1885, the villa was bought by private individuals, whose heirs are still in possession, and is partially open to the public.

Villa Palagonia has been one of the venues for music concerts held within the framework of the Concert Season of Bagheria (Stagione Concertistica Città di Bagheria) initiative since 2017, with free entrance.

Palagonìa and Mineo
Palagonìa and Mineo are a rocky area rich of caverns escaved and adhibited to be funerary tombs. One of them, the tomb 15 of Mineo (St. Febronia), has an inscription with letters high 8.5/6 cm on the right side and 13/10 cm on the left one. Palegraphic studies of the funerary public inscriptions are the unique available methodology to date Sicilian tombs back to the VII century BC. Similar archeological findings were held in Licodia Eubea, Sciri (with relevant affinities to the etruscan Tarquinia) and Mendolito (Adrano), showing a close connection between the Sicels and the population living in the central Italy like the Etruscans.

Filmography

 * Several scenes of L'Avventura (1960), by Michelangelo Antonioni, with Monica Vitti, were filmed at the Villa Palagonia.
 * Several scenes of " Mafioso (1962), by Alberto Lattuada, with Alberto Sordi
 * In The Wedding Director (2006), by Marco Bellocchio, Sami Frey plays the part of a descendant of the Prince Gravina di Palagonia.
 * Filming of the scenes from "L'Avventura" are featured in "Baaria" (2009) which is set in Bagheria by director Giuseppe Tornatore