Museums
Piazza Armerina
Diocesan Museum
The Diocesan Museum is housed in the Bishop’s Palace, an elegant Mannerist building attributed to Giandomenico Gagini, with Baroque influences but a very sober style, dating back to the first half of the 17th century. It currently houses a permanent exhibition of rediscovered and restored works of art of ecclesiastical origin or religious themes, and temporary exhibitions of contemporary art on the western mezzanine.
The permanent exhibition, entitled “Recoveries and Restitutions. Acquisitions and Restorations in the Diocese of Piazza Armerina,” offers visitors several highly valuable works, including the large canvas of Saint Andrew the Apostle from the late 16th century, the Immaculate Conception dated 1603, and the Deposition from the mid-17th century, all from the Grand Priory of Sant’Andrea. Numerous wooden works, crucifixes, and statues, mostly dating from the 17th century, are also on display. The museum also has a small bookshop. The palace was built to house the bishops of Catania during their visits to the city and was part of the Bishop of Piazza Armerina’s dowry when the diocese was established in 1817. In reality, only Bishop Msgr. Palermo lived there between 1887 and 1896. The building remained abandoned for several decades, then served as a school from the late 1930s to the 1950s, before falling into disrepair once again. Restored by the Bishopric in the late 1990s to house the Diocesan Museum, it features an elegant courtyard dominated by a three-arched loggia.
Municipal Art Gallery
After the unification of Italy, the laws for the suppression of religious corporations and the liquidation of the ecclesiastical estate (1866) posed to Piazza, among other things, the problem of the enormous artistic heritage kept in the convents and churches confiscated and, in part, ceded to the Municipality.
In particular, the church of Sant’Agata, annexed to the Benedictine convent of the same name, created in the mid-16th century through the transformation of several private homes, was so rich in exquisite works of art that Mayor Antonio Crescimanno, acting on a resolution from the Provincial Commission for the Conservation of Monuments and Works of Art, had the City Council approve a resolution in 1885 designating it as a municipal art gallery and museum. After a lengthy dispute with the Bishop, it was returned, and most of the artworks it contained were transferred to the Cathedral, but the municipal art gallery was now established. It would not be until November 1898 that it was allocated space (“two rooms on the first floor of Palazzo Fundrò”), thanks to the will of Mayor Francesco Camerata.
In 2002, the urban redevelopment project called “Places of Culture” and funded by the Sicilian region included plans to set up the Municipal Art Gallery in the north wing of the former Convent of the Trinity, also a Benedictine nun, built in the mid-15th century and active until 1880 when, transferred to the Municipality, it was transformed into a boys’ elementary school and nursery school.
The work, begun in 200?, was completed in 2011. The art gallery contains works of art owned by the Municipality, including some donated by citizen benefactors specifically for the exhibition, as well as works owned by other entities offered on loan to the Municipality to ensure their full social enjoyment.
Church of Santa Maria La Cava
Seat of the Sanctuary dedicated to St. Philip the Apostle.
The history of this church is linked to the history of Sicily itself, as its foundation in 1134 AD by Countess Adelasia, niece of Count Roger of Hauteville, had the church and tower built by Cluniac monks following the Burgundian style.
The clerics who followed the Norman knights were employed to build the churches and towers, Arab craftsmen were employed for the stone carving works, while the work of Byzantine masters was used for the mosaics.
The apse of the church, the base of the tower with a cross vault and the beautiful entrance door facing south with its pointed arch are in Arab-Norman style.
Permanent Exhibition of the Ancient Book
Housed within the Jesuit College, the Municipal Library, named after the brothers Alceste and Remigio Roccella, politicians and intellectuals who worked in the late nineteenth century, contains approximately 40,000 volumes, including 122 incunabula (15th-century books), 783 sixteenth-century books, dozens of manuscripts from various periods, and books with highly valuable copper engravings.
Such a rich heritage remained for a long time available only to scholars who, under the watchful eye of the Director and staff, were able to leaf through the pages of such rare and precious books.
Since spring 2009, the permanent exhibition of ancient books has been open in the Jesuit Choir Hall, adorned with precious Baroque stucco. Some of the library’s most valuable volumes are displayed on a rotating basis in specially designed and constructed display cases.
From the Book of Privileges, which collects the privileges granted by the kings of Sicily from 1300 to 1760, to one of Filippo Arena’s volumes published in 1767 on the Nature and Culture of Flowers, to Prospero Intorcetta’s volume, the first Latin translation of Confucius’s texts from 1662, to other volumes, mostly from the libraries of convents confiscated after the unification of Italy, some of which are present in only a very few Italian libraries.
