A Palace in Sicily

A PALACE IN SICILY

ISBN: 978-1-78884-139-9

ËxHSLHSIy841399zv&:&:;:+:! £40.00/$55.00

www.accartbooks.com

Jean-Louis Remilleux Photographs by Mattia Aquila

Following the death of the Marquis de Castelluccio – one of the last Sicilian ‘leopards’ – his home falls asleep and crumbles, like the world into which he was born.

Half a century later, Jean-Louis Remilleux falls in love with this exceptional 18th-century palace, now lying in ruins, and embarks on its restoration. A beautiful testimony to architecture and Sicilian decorative arts, and providing an evocative location for the film Cyrano, this baroque masterpiece is now fully unveiled in A Palace in Sicily.

Contents

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A Palace in Sicily

30

Palazzo Castelluccio

34 Courtyard 38 Grand staircase to the piano nobile 44 Entrance to the piano nobile 52 Billiard room 64 Ballroom 67 Music room 80 Access to the terrace 83 Fireplace gallery 87 Cabinet of curiosities 96 Empire room 102 Old kitchens 106 Volcano room 114 Throne room 122 Small reception room 126 Murat room 138 Anteroom to the oratory 147 Oratory 152 Dining room 162 Library 166 Library terrace 168 Atrium of the private apartments 176 The Marquis’s apartments 186 Belvedere 188 Roof garden 196 Staircase to the private apartments

on the upper floors

220

Detailed picture captions

The architect meets the palace

228

Plans and elevations

224

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“Seeing Noto, one thinks that the inhabitants must have no other design than to expiate the sins that had drawn down the punishment of heaven upon them, so numerous are the churches and convents that they have built.”

An anonymous traveller in the 18th century.

Noto, not far from the sea. This tragic misfortune was to give rise to a glorious city where the greatest architects of the time (Sinatra, Gagliardi, and others) would make Noto the symbol of a renaissance. Baroque architecture, an enormous cathedral with a gleaming dome, one of the most beautiful town halls in Sicily, palaces, convents, dozens of churches and chapels and, of course, a palace for every great family. Nietzsche wrote somewhere, “We have art in order not to die of the truth!” It could have been said by an 18th-century Sicilian. Another traveller commented, after a brief visit to this new town where the churches stood so thick on the ground: “Seeing Noto, one thinks that the inhabitants must have no other design than to expiate the sins that had drawn down the punishment of heaven upon them, so numerous are the churches and convents that they have built.”

Even if we have no interest in mindless sunbathing and decline the usual obligatory holiday destinations, the rows of temples in Agrigento are not enough to transport us to Sicily. That summer, as so often before, I fled from Paris to the Mediterranean, accompanied by a few friends attracted by this paradisaical, tormented island described almost everywhere. Then Sicily unveiled all that she had to offer, an unrivalled cornucopia… The antique Graeco-Roman theatre of Taormina, the Villa Romana del Casale with its impressively inventive mosaics in a remarkable state of preservation,

The long Via Cavour in Noto, which ends at the Castelluccio Palace, here lit up at night.

the Temple of Segesta, even lovelier, more elegant and spectacular than its counterparts in Agrigento, looking out in spring over masses of poppies and daisies.

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This grand history and its memories populate the historic heart of these communities on which the sun beats down: Cefalù, Trapani and Bagheria, where the Villa Palagonia, surrounded by stone monsters, bears startling testimony to the originality and imagination of Sicilian architecture and art and to the kind of artists who worked on the building of these exceptional villas. The interior decoration of the Villa Palagonia, like those of the Palatine Chapel of Palermo and, dating from the 18th century, nearer our own period, of the Biscari Palace in Catania, are sufficient to confirm that Sicilian art has been nourished by the most positive foreign influences down the centuries. This journey through the eternal Sicily goes hand in hand with the discovery of the Aeolian Islands, in particular Salina and Lipari, which have remained beautifully authentic. We push on a little further than Catania, dominated by Mount Etna, towards Syracuse. The landscape changes. A shock is in store.

We enter Noto dazzled by the grandeur and delicacy of the buildings. This “Sicilian

This “Sicilian baroque”, of which the town is the figurehead, would never have come into being without the disaster of 1693, which devastated the former bastion of eastern Sicily.

baroque”, of which the town is the figurehead, would never have come into being without the disaster of 1693, which devastated the former bastion of eastern Sicily. Today, a very geometrical plan reigns. A few main roads, parallel, with a beginning and an end. An avenue for the religious institutions, another for the palaces and the noble families, one more for the merchant class. Lower down, the common people.

Noto has been described as a garden of stones; a garden, yes, but in the French fashion: here nature is perfectly tamed, the banks of flowers, arbours and box hedges are

Palazzo Di Lorenzo del Castelluccio.

Entrance porch.

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symmetrical, standing to attention. One visits them as if inspecting an elite army. This precisely proportioned town plan blots out the memory of the tragic shambles that was “Noto Antica”. It is a renaissance, supported politically by the Crown, but a renaissance in good order and in the faith. The domed cathedral, the Ducezio Palace, the monasteries and all the town’s great churches are still there today to proclaim proudly: look at us, the abyss nearly swallowed us, but by the grace of God we are here, resplendent and still standing.

One does not notice immediately, one’s eyes being so busy looking at the aston-ishing balconies of the Nicolaci Palace, with their large heads that seem to belong to some

What state was the palace in when I arrived?

It was a sleeping beauty that had lived through many stormy winters.

mediaeval carnival, but there is something else that can slowly but surely make the most insensitive visitor fall in love with Noto. This thing, even more than the majestic monuments that parade in such harmonious succession, accentuates the stone, all in ochre or rose-pink, depending on whether the sun is rising or setting… This thing dazzled me, perhaps even blinded me. The light. The light of Noto. That blue. That yellow. Its aesthetic force rooted me to the spot like a child in the scenery of a huge theatre.

You may object that one doesn’t have to buy a palace, even a ruined one, in every spellbinding place on the planet. That is arguable. Love at first sight, whether genuine or just a whim, can outlast certain passions. Be that as it may, on that day, when I made my first visit to Noto, we walked down the Via Cavour. One of the many virtues of the Sicilians is that they accept their history everywhere and at all times, naming their streets after all the monarchs, Victor Emmanuel, Umberto of Savoy, Ferdinand de Bourbon or Garibaldi, and of course, Cavour, the first prime minister of unified Italy.

Via Cavour is long. It starts at the majestic Trigona Palace; then, on the right, comes the Astuto Palace, of which a writer on the Grand Tour said that it possessed the most beautiful hanging gardens that he had seen since his visit to Aleppo, in Syria. Next is the entrance to the Nicolaci Palace, followed by other, smaller palaces, occupied by government bodies. Last of all, at the end of Via Cavour, stands a long, high, straight façade covered with mourning black like a building consumed by an evil moss after its large, ragged shutters were hung.

By chance, or luck, or divine providence, call it what you will, at the very moment when I stopped opposite the neoclassical façade of this palace which is different from the others, its heavy bronze-green double doors swung open. A car came out. A caretaker, no doubt. Who could possibly still be living in such a building, where pigeons fly out of every hole in the abandoned structure in a noisy burst of dusty feathers? In one brief moment, I just have time to glimpse a main courtyard paved with flagstones, overrun with weeds, where two tall palm trees reach skywards straight in front of me. At the back, a second façade, apparently older, suggests that this palace must have been built in several phases, over a period of time. The palms caress the stones as the wind stirs them, and the whole thing is reminiscent of an opera set, in a romantic, oriental scene. All this in its death throes.

If the expression were not trite in an age when lovers meet on the internet and friends are found on Facebook, I would say I had the wonderfully outdated feeling that I had just fallen in love. In the paintings by Hubert Robert or the works of the Italian painter Panini, the ruins are so beautiful that they come alive again: the architecture, the stone, the plants and the people are one. This is exactly what I felt at that moment. Then the doors closed again, revealing a notice showing the identity of this castle in the town: “Palazzo Di Lorenzo del Castelluccio. 1782”.

Nicolaci palace baroque balconies, Noto.

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38

Grand staircase to the piano nobile.

39

52

Billiard room.

53

80

Access to the terrace.

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A PALACE IN SICILY

ISBN: 978-1-78884-139-9

ËxHSLHSIy841399zv&:&:;:+:! £40.00/$55.00

www.accartbooks.com

Jean-Louis Remilleux Photographs by Mattia Aquila

Following the death of the Marquis de Castelluccio – one of the last Sicilian ‘leopards’ – his home falls asleep and crumbles, like the world into which he was born.

Half a century later, Jean-Louis Remilleux falls in love with this exceptional 18th-century palace, now lying in ruins, and embarks on its restoration. A beautiful testimony to architecture and Sicilian decorative arts, and providing an evocative location for the film Cyrano, this baroque masterpiece is now fully unveiled in A Palace in Sicily.