Museo etnografico “G. Pitré”, Palermo

In the museum setup curated by architect Antonio Di Lorenzo, Palazzo Tarallo hosts temporary and permanent exhibitions, focusing 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, containing 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, two elegant eighteenth-century sedan chairs and some artifacts from the Museum of taste and cultured aristocratic commissioning have been placed, even if made in the same artisan workshops from which more popular use works also emerged; among these, some painted furniture from the late 1700s, coming from the former National Museum (now the “Antonino Salinas” Regional Archaeological Museum). These include a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, an altar-furniture, a “scarabattola” and two display cases. Although of different origin, they present some homogeneous data: they belong to the 18th century, are Sicilian craftsmanship, and share the common characteristic of being painted. The artisans who made them had as a reference model the furniture with chinoiserie of the high aristocracy, widely spread.