Description
Piazza Pretoria, on the edge of the Kalsa, a few steps from the Quattro Canti, is one of the most scenic squares in Palermo. Almost entirely taken up by an enormous marble fountain, it is surrounded by a town hall, a Baroque church and two baronial palaces.
At the center is the Pretoria Fountain: a circular plan with four flights of steps, three basins stacked like a pyramid and, at the top, a Bacchus, who in Palermo was identified with the Genius of the city. All around are statues of deities, tritons, nereids and allegories of rivers.
Around it stand the Palazzo Pretorio, seat of the city government, built in the 1300s and renovated in the 1800s, the church of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, from the late 1500s, and two baronial palaces, Bonocore and Bordonaro. On the fourth side a stairway descends to Via Maqueda.
Palermitans also call it the "Square of Shame". There are three explanations: the nude statues, which supposedly scandalized the nuns of the nearby monastery; a legend about Queen Joan of Anjou; or, according to the most recent studies, the expense.
And the expense was truly enormous. The fountain was not born for Palermo: it was made from 1554 in Florence by the sculptor Francesco Camilliani, for the garden of Don Luigi di Toledo, brother of the Grand Duchess Eleonora. Vasari called it "a stupendous fountain".
Deep in debt, in 1573 Don Luigi sold it to the Senate of Palermo. It arrived by sea on May 26, 1574, dismantled into 644 pieces, and not all intact: some statues were ruined in the journey, and others perhaps stayed in Tuscany.
To make room for it, several houses were demolished. The sculptor's son, Camillo Camilliani, reassembled it with the help of Michelangelo Naccherino, adding new parts. The work was finished in 1581.
In the 1700s the fountain was considered the symbol of a corrupt city administration; in 1737 an iron railing was fitted against damage. It is said that the people of Messina defaced the noses of many statues, and that the Palermitans, in reply, broke the fingers of Neptune.
At the center is the Pretoria Fountain: a circular plan with four flights of steps, three basins stacked like a pyramid and, at the top, a Bacchus, who in Palermo was identified with the Genius of the city. All around are statues of deities, tritons, nereids and allegories of rivers.
Around it stand the Palazzo Pretorio, seat of the city government, built in the 1300s and renovated in the 1800s, the church of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, from the late 1500s, and two baronial palaces, Bonocore and Bordonaro. On the fourth side a stairway descends to Via Maqueda.
Palermitans also call it the "Square of Shame". There are three explanations: the nude statues, which supposedly scandalized the nuns of the nearby monastery; a legend about Queen Joan of Anjou; or, according to the most recent studies, the expense.
And the expense was truly enormous. The fountain was not born for Palermo: it was made from 1554 in Florence by the sculptor Francesco Camilliani, for the garden of Don Luigi di Toledo, brother of the Grand Duchess Eleonora. Vasari called it "a stupendous fountain".
Deep in debt, in 1573 Don Luigi sold it to the Senate of Palermo. It arrived by sea on May 26, 1574, dismantled into 644 pieces, and not all intact: some statues were ruined in the journey, and others perhaps stayed in Tuscany.
To make room for it, several houses were demolished. The sculptor's son, Camillo Camilliani, reassembled it with the help of Michelangelo Naccherino, adding new parts. The work was finished in 1581.
In the 1700s the fountain was considered the symbol of a corrupt city administration; in 1737 an iron railing was fitted against damage. It is said that the people of Messina defaced the noses of many statues, and that the Palermitans, in reply, broke the fingers of Neptune.