CLOSE, VERY CLOSE

From Casa Majore, beauty is reachable in less than fifteen minutes or a maximum of a two hour drive away: the baroque cities of Comiso, Grammichele, Ragusa Ibla, Modica, Scicli, Palazzolo Acreide and Noto, the great ceramics of Caltagirone, the ancient Greek sites of Kamarina, Siracusa and Catania and also the Roman villas of Piazza Armerina, Enna and Agrigento.

EIGHT SMALL MUSEUMS

Chiaramonte Gulfi proudly holds the title of having eight small museums. The presence of these eight small museums shows the love for conserving and keeping the memories of a mountain town, being 668 meters above sea level. Here, « pork is glorified »...

MUSEUM OF HOLY ART

The museum, in via Santa Caterina in divided in to four sections: religious ritual, where the vestments and holy objects are displayed as well as an altar cross in mother of pearl; the Plastic art represented by the terracotta of the Criscione family; the paintings; furniture and ceramics with a collection of works by Giacomo Alessi.



MUSEUM OF MILITARY MEMORABILIA

The museum is in Piazza Duomo and exhibits more than a thousand objects, collected by Emanuele Gulino. In addition to an important exhibition of helmets, uniforms and badges there is a section dedicated to lighters, sent home by the soldiers.

MUSEUM EMBROIDERY AND SICILIAN NEEDLEWORK

The museum’s entrance is in via Lauria n°4 in the oldest part of town, dating back to its founder Manfredi III Chiaramonte. The Sicilian needlework is a particularly elaborate needlework technique, this art is passed from mother to daughter. There are even requests for pieces of work from Japan



LIBERTY HOUSE MUSEUM

A tour in the recent past of the style from the beginning of the last century. The furniture, objects and fabric collection, collected by Emiliana Figliuoli, are exhibited at Palace Montesano and are examples of work by René Lalique, François-Théodore Legras, Fratelli Calderoni, Ernesto Basile, and Carlo Zen.

ORNITHOLOGY MUSEUM

Located in Palace Montesano, there is an important collection of six hundred species of stuffed birds from Sicily, Italy and the rest of the world, collected by the Azzara brothers in the 50s. Amongst the sections, the cases exhibiting the eagles, vultures and, griffins are particularly interesting



MUSEUM OF ETHNIC MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

At palace Montesano musical instruments from Duccio Belgiorno’s collection are exhibited. Next to Tibetan flutes made out of a human tibia, animal tusks, thumb pianos from the east and southern Africa, Argentinian charangos, made out of Armadillo shells, are the balalaike and sitar.

OLIVE OIL MUSEUM

Palace Montesano honours the Iblean olive oil with a museum that explains the culture behind the precious liquid: from a 15th century olive press, a stone mill, various amphora and many more specific objects.



ART GALLERY GIOVANNI DE VITA

Montesano Palace exhibits the work of the painter Giovanni De Vita, (1906,1990) elusive, figurative artist, and delicate author of tempera, oil and watercolour paintings, who had his studio in via Castello, where in 1986 Leonardo Sciascia, awarded like De Vita as a distinguished Sicilian, visited him. The painter donated to Sciascia a watercolour painting, he kindly declined the proposal of the writer who expressed the desire to organize an exhibition in Palermo.