Regional Museum of Palazzo Mirto, Palermo

Palazzo Mirto was the Palermitan residence for four centuries of the ancient and noble Filangeri family, whose arrival in Sicily dates back to the Norman period. The title of Mirto came to the family through Giuseppe Filangeri e Spuches, who was named in 1643 “first prince of Mirto,” after a fiefdom located in the territory of Messina. 

The building is the result of numerous transformations that took place over the centuries.

In 1982, the family’s last heir, the noblewoman Maria Concetta Lanza Filangeri, fulfilling the wishes of her brother Stefano, donated the palace to the Region of Sicily so that it could be preserved in its integrity and opened to the public. The palace is structured as follows: On the ground floor are the former prisons, the large and small kitchens, the stables where carriages, gigs, and harnesses from the 19th century are kept, forming the Martorana Genuardi collection of the Barons of Molinazzo, now owned by the Regional Department of Cultural and Environmental Heritage; the warehouses; and the servants’ quarters, which together with the third floor, home to the house administration, complete the palace structure.

The first floor, or noble floor, features a sequence of sumptuously furnished rooms, one after the other, around a hanging courtyard with a splendid baroque fountain, culminating in the Baldachin Hall and the Tapestry Hall.

The second floor, while containing rooms intended for social use but among a more restricted circle of friends, was reserved for the private life of the family.