Museo regionale di Palazzo Mirto, Palermo

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

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

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

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

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