Villa Niscemi
The villa was the main residence of the Valguarnera di Niscemi family for at least three centuries.
Fulco di Verdura, a famous XNUMXth century artist and jeweler, son of Carolina di Valguarnera, spent his childhood in the villa.
In 1987, the descendants of the family (albeit in order of age, the last Valguarnera, to date, is the daughter of the first cousin Corrado, Maria Carolina Valguarnera), Margherita (called Maita) Valguarnera and Maria Immacolata (called Mimì) Valguarnera , Princess Romanov, sold the monumental complex to the Municipality of Palermo which made it its representative office.
The main body on two elevations retains traces of pre-existing late seventeenth-century structures, when the villa was an agricultural beam.
In the eighteenth century, in the wake of the fashion of summer holidays, the estate was taken over by the Valguarnera family, to make it a place of delight. The site was rich in game and rare animals, so it lent itself well to the use of hunting lodges. The park of the villa bordered the Real Tenuta della Favorita, a favorite place for hunting by the Bourbons during their Sicilian exile in the early nineteenth century. This was the golden age of Villa Niscemi, which hosted Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina of Austria in its rooms. In fact, the Valguarnera family completely reconfigured the pre-existing complex, remodeling the exteriors in a late-eighteenth-century key and even more the interiors, enriching them with frescoes, paintings, damasks and works of art.
Inside, furnishings, paintings and furnishings evoke the charm of a lost time, even if the most important furnishings were taken away from the villa before the sale. From 1881 until his death in 1896, the architect of the factory was Giovan Battista Palazzotto, who intervened by designing the decoration of some rooms on the main floor including the large entrance hall where the large stone fireplace he designed and built by sculptor Vincenzo La Parola and the Library with the wooden fireplace, today the Mayor's studio. The current access staircase and part of the second floor arrangement are due to the same architect. In the green room - or of the Four Seasons, from the personifications that adorn the long walls - the fresco (made in 1774) which portrays Charlemagne granting the coat of arms to Valguarnera, which pays homage to him, stands out on the back wall. (Source: wikipedia)
Card insertion: Ignazio Caloggero
Photo: web
Information contributions: Ignazio Caloggero Web,
Property included in the Multimedia Archive of Esoteric Cultural Heritage
The property has been recognised as a property that could present characteristics attributable to theCultural EsotericismGroup belonging: A
Methodological note:
The assets entered in the archive are divided into three groups, based on their level of recognition and documentation:
- Group A – Well signposted: This includes cultural assets identified as potentially esoteric. This is an initial observation phase, during which the asset is studied, compared with sources, and critically evaluated.
- Group B – Recognized asset: It includes assets for which there are reliable studies and documentation attesting to their belonging to the Esoteric Cultural Heritage, but which are not yet accompanied by the complete esoteric profile.
- Group C – Well documented: It contains fully recognized and analyzed items, accompanied by a detailed esoteric description illustrating their symbolic meanings, interpretations, and historical-cultural context. This is the most advanced level of documentation within the archive.
To ensure rigor and interpretative consistency, the archive is based on a rigorous methodology aimed at avoiding the indiscriminate inclusion of cultural assets. To this end, specific criteria are adopted: recognition tools and a classification system, illustrated in the project Archive of Cultural Esotericism, described on the external site Experiential itineraries, to which we refer for further methodological information.