Palazzo Biscari
Palazzo Biscari is the most sumptuous private building in Catania, the structure, the plant and the decorations certainly represent a unique case. Built after the earthquake in 1693, thanks to the permission of the king to build on the embankment of the sixteenth-century walls of Charles V, the works lasted more than a century, involving the greatest Catania architects of the time. It is the triumph not only of taste and style, but also of the technical skills of the carvers and decorators who had trained in the great 18th-century Catania construction site.
These decorations had to be seen by those who came to Catania from the sea, in fact all the buildings that followed the edge of the coast were called “Il Teatro della Marina”. The palace reached its maximum splendor with the intervention of Ignazio V, Prince of Biscari. Thanks to his knowledge and his passion for art, literature and archeology, he suggests, proposes ways and solutions to the architects employed. In addition to the construction of a theater with three tiers of boxes and with an external access for the public, he devoted himself to the construction and arrangement of a museum for his archaeological collections. The palace is still largely inhabited by descendants and its main halls are often used for prestigious events of a worldly and cultural nature. Most of the collections collected in the museum of the Prince of Biscari were donated to the municipality and transferred to the Civic Museum of the Ursino Castle.
