Lanzi Tomasi Palace
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Description

Lanzi Tomasi Palace

Via Butera n. 26-44

The palace was built between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century on the military casemates behind it the sixteenth century city walls. In 1728 the Theatine Fathers used it as an Imperial College for the education of the nobles. The College was closed in 1768 and the palace was bought by Giuseppe Amato, Prince of Galati. He unified the façade overlooking the sea, made up of ten windows with a facing terrace, into a single Vanvitellian-style façade.
In 1849 the palazzo was bought by Prince Giulio Fabrizio di Lampedusa, amateur astronomer, with the compensation paid to him by the crown for the expropriation of the island of Lampedusa. Giulio Fabrizio will be the model for the protagonist of the The Leopard, the novel written by his great-grandson Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. In 1862 De Paces, rich ship-owners related to The Florio family, bought half of the building and transformed it according to the taste of the time. The grand staircase was built with materials resulting from the demolitions for the construction of the Massimo Opera House. A grand ballroom was built with a wooden floor made of alternating walnut and cherry staves.

In the 1948 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who had lost the family palace in the 23 bombardment of April 1943, reappears the property from De Pace, and will live there until his death in 1957. The adoptive son, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, reunified the entire property and carried out a complete restoration of the building.

The main charm of the building lies in its position and in the play of spaces and lights. The furniture has the character of the large ones patrician palermitane residences and presents a collection of furniture and furnishings from the best Sicilian cabinetmaking.

Il floor of the building largely constitutes the house museum of the writer. There historical library by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa has remained intact since his death. All his manuscripts are exhibited in the ballroom: the complete manuscript of The Leopard, that of the fourth part of the novel containing a page that does not appear in the publication, the typescript, the manuscripts of the Lessons of French and English Literature and Stories, a first draft of La Sirena.

In the south-west wing of the building, recently restored, the portraits of the writer's ancestors are exhibited, including that of his great-grandfather Principe Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi of Lampedusa, which inspired the figure of the protagonist of the The Leopard. The new wing includes a Conference room with a beautiful frescoed ceiling and a splendid collection of French fans of the eighteenth century, and the so-called Mediterranean room with a valuable collection of English nautical charts of the late nineteenth century.

In the monumental staircase, in the two entrance halls and in the historic library, the furnishings are almost entirely made up of furniture and paintings from the destroyed Palazzo Lampedusa and the Palazzo di Santa Margherita di Belice, the summer residence of the Filangeri of Cutò, the writer's maternal family, destroyed by the earthquake in the Belice Valley in 1968. The remaining furnishings on the noble floor come from the collections of the Marquis of Villa Urrutia and the Ruffo di Bagnara family that were present in the Lanza Palace of Mazzarino.

Palazzo Lanza Tomasi is a notified historic residence and its owner is the president of the Sicilian Historic Houses Association. (Text source: https://www.butera28.it/it/palazzo-lanza-tomasi-palermo/)

Property bound under the law 1089/1939 

download decree:

FROM n. 5033 of 30.01.1992

 

Card insertion: Ignazio Caloggero

Photo: web

Information contributions: Ignazio Caloggero Web, 

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