Casa Florio in Palermo: the Art Nouveau building in Arenella which attracts thousands of visitors every year. This is the last home of the Florios, the well-known family that made Palermo great. The appointment at the Palazzina dei Quattro Pizzi all'Arenella (downhill Tonnara) is for Saturday 21 January 2023.
Visit to Casa Florio
Together with Terradamare and the Paladino Florio family, therefore, you can visit the Palazzina dei Quattro Pizzi. The building, designed by architect Carlo Giachery in neo-Gothic style, surrounded by the exclusive 'scenography' of the Palermo sea, is the last home of Vincent Florio III. The visits will take place inside the reception hall, where there is a small museum with fascinating relics that belonged to the family who gave and did so much for the city of Palermo. During the visit it will be possible to admire the revivalist-style frescoes created by the painters Salvatore Gregorietti and by Emilio Murdolo, master of Renato Guttuso.
The building of the four laces
The complex of Tonnara dell'Arenella it was purchased in 1830 by Vincenzo Florio, who commissioned its transformation from his friend and collaborator, the architect Carlo Giachery. Thus was born the building called "The Four Laces" neo-Gothic quadrangular building, so called for the four spiers that dominate it. The only neo-Gothic building built by Giachery, whose interests are aimed rather at functional projects of industrial architecture as well as the study of new materials. The unusual design recalls an English Gothic, softened by a suggestive Mediterranean setting. In 1852, Giachery himself was commissioned to build the windmill for grinding the sumac, still included in the Arenella complex, from which tannin was extracted, at the time the protagonist of a flourishing trade in Sicily.
A part of the complex is used as a home for the weekends; many illustrious personalities were guests of the building, not least the Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova, during his stay in Palermo. The latter is so fascinated by Casa Florio that she has the "four laces" faithfully reproduced in Snamenka, near St.Pietroburgo. A locality on the shores of the gulf of Finland, in the park of his summer residence of Peterhof who, in memory of Palermo, calls "Renella". The building still exists. After the period of great successes and celebrities, Vincenzo Florio retired to the Tonnara dell'Arenella with his family, choosing it as his home. The tonnara remained in operation until the early twentieth century. Today the ancient building is the emblem of an extraordinary period that has remained in the annals of Sicilian history.
(Facebook photo Casa Florio)
