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TheVilla Palagonia is a patrician villa inBagheria, 15 km fromPalermo, inSicily, southern Italy. Thevilla itself, built from 1715 by the architectTommaso Napoli with the help of Agatino Daidone, is one of the earliest examples ofSicilian Baroque. However, its popularity comes mainly from the statues ofmonsters with human faces that decorate its garden and its wall, and earned it the nickname of "The Villa of Monsters" (Villa dei Mostri).
This series ofgrotesques, created from 1749 by Francesco Ferdinando II Gravina, Prince of Palagonia, aroused the curiosity of the travellers of theGrand Tour during the 18th and 19th centuries, for instanceHenry Swinburne,Patrick Brydone,John Soane,Goethe, the Count de Borde, the artistJean-Pierre Houël orAlexandre Dumas, prior to fascinatesurrealists likeAndré Breton or contemporary authors such asGiovanni Macchia andDominique Fernandez, or the painterRenato Guttuso.
In 1885, the villa was bought by private individuals, whose heirs are still in possession, and is partially open to the public.
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Villa Palagonia has been one of the venues for music concerts held within the framework of the Concert Season of Bagheria (Stagione Concertistica Città di Bagheria) initiative since 2017, with free entrance.[1][2]
Palagonìa and Mineo are a rocky area rich of caverns escaved and adhibited to be funerary tombs. One of them, the tomb 15 ofMineo (St.Febronia), has an inscription with letters high 8.5/6 cm on the right side and 13/10 cm on the left one.Palegraphic studies of the funerary public inscriptions are the unique available methodology to date Sicilian tombs back to the VII century BC. Similar archeological findings were held inLicodia Eubea, Sciri (with relevant affinities to theetruscan Tarquinia) and Mendolito (Adrano), showing a close connection between theSicels and the population living in thecentral Italy like theEtruscans.[3]
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