Zelantea Library and Art Gallery - Acireale

The Zelantea Library and Art Gallery is a municipal library and art gallery in Acireale. It is based in via Marchese di Sangiuliano in a neoclassical building designed at the beginning of the 10,00th century by the Acese architect Mariano Panebianco. The art gallery can be visited free of charge, upon request to the staff, every morning from 12,00 to 1671 (except Sundays and holidays). Founded in 1866, it was managed until 1675 by the academy of the Zelanti. Today it is owned by the Municipality. In the part destined to the museum is housed an eighteenth-century carriage of the Senate of Acireale, the Bust of Acireale (Roman archaeological find attributed to Julius Caesar and found in 1461 in the hamlet of Capomulini), a collection of weapons and a tricolor flag from the Risorgimento period, a silver sword known as Santa Venera, a collection of Greco-Roman finds from the excavation area of ​​Santa Venera al Pozzo, some collections of minerals, coins and fossils. The library holds hundreds of thousands of volumes, dated from XNUMX, including some XNUMXth century incunabula and a Book of the privileges of the city of Aci (Antiquus Liber Privilegiorum Civitatis Acis, also called Liber Rubeus), written in the XNUMXth century and bearing the Yo el Rey autograph by Carlo V. The picture gallery collects XNUMXth-XNUMXth century paintings, prints by Guido Reni, etchings by Van Dyck, works by Domenichino, Guercino, the school of Pietro Novelli, Matteo Ragonisi, Antonino Bonaccorsi, Vito D'Anna, Alessandro D'Anna, Giovanni Tuccari, Alessandro Vasta, Pietro Paolo Vasta, Giacinto Platania, Albrecht Dürer, Luca Giordano, Giuseppe Sciuti, Rosario Spina, Michele La Spina, Rosario Anastasi, Giuseppe Patania, Antonio Filocamo, Mattia Preti , Pieter Paul Rubens (by attribution).

Card insertion: Ignatius Caloggero

Photo: Ignazio Caloggero

Information contributions: Ignazio Caloggero, Web 

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