Museo etnográfico “G. Pitré”, Palermo

In the museographic setup curated by architect Antonio Di Lorenzo, Palazzo Tarallo hosts temporary and permanent exhibitions, which focus on particular aspects of popular culture and traditions. The permanent exhibition is arranged in the noble floor rooms, among which stands out the large hall frescoed by Pietro Martorana, which contains a beautiful seventeenth-century bed with a wrought iron headboard. Here, cultural meetings and book presentations will be organized. In the other six rooms on the first floor are placed two elegant eighteenth-century sedan chairs and some artifacts from the Museum of cultured and aristocratic taste and commission, even if made in those same artisan workshops from which more popular use items came out; among them, some painted furniture, from the late 1700s, coming from the former National Museum (today Regional Archaeological Museum “Antonino Salinas”). These include a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, an altar furniture, a “scarabattola” and two cases. Although of different origin, they share some homogeneous features: they belong to the 18th century, are of Sicilian manufacture, and have the common characteristic of being painted. The artisans who made them used as reference model the chinoiserie furniture of the high aristocracy, widely spread.