Casa Museo Antonino Uccello

Poet and ethnographer Antonino Uccello created a museum of Sicilian rural life in an eighteenth-century palazzo in Palazzolo Acreide. The Casa Museo opened in 1971 and is operated by the Regione Siciliana’s cultural heritage department.

Why it matters

Uccello assembled objects and room settings to preserve a broader record of rural life. Born in Canicattini Bagni on 11 September 1922, Uccello worked as a teacher in Lombardy and studied popular song for the National Academy of Santa Cecilia. He returned to Palazzolo Acreide in 1961, bought a wing of the eighteenth-century Palazzo Ferla and began assembling the collection. The Casa Museo opened in 1971. Uccello directed it until his death in Palazzolo on 29 October 1979.

The collection preserves material culture including looms, hearths, cart gear, paintings on glass and puppet-theatre bills. Reconstructed rooms present settings for work and ritual, including bread baking and cheesemaking.

What to notice

Reconstructed peasant-house rooms present hearth, bedding, tools and furniture arranged as a Hyblaean farmhouse interior. In the display known as a casa ro massaru, a set of miniature peasant-house furnishings catalogued by the national heritage institute, the whole material world of the massaro — the farm steward — is reproduced in wood, clay and tin, down to the madia kneading-trough.

The collection also includes devotional waxworks. The catalogue records pieces from the mid-nineteenth century, including an Agnus Dei group and the sculptural group Irene cura San Sebastiano — Saint Irene tending the wounded martyr — attributed to Fra Salvatore da Noto and executed in the manner of the great modeller Giulio Zumbo. The displays also include paintings on glass, which Uccello studied for his 1968 book, and bills for the Opera dei Pupi puppet theatre.

Context and history

The museum grew from Uccello's double career as poet and ethnographer. His collections of verse — Triale (1957), La notte dell'Ascensione (1958), Canti del Val di Noto (1959) — ran alongside studies of popular song, among them a re-reading of the Risorgimento through Sicilian folk music (1961), and then a sequence of works issuing directly from the museum: on Sicilian folklore (1972), the culture of wood (1973), love and marriage (1976), breads and sweets (1976), popular weaving (1978), the popular nativity scene (1979). Culture of cheesemaking appeared posthumously in 1980, published by the museum's friends' association.

The Casa Museo is housed in Palazzo Bonelli Ferla, an eighteenth-century building on Via Machiavelli. The Regione Siciliana’s cultural heritage department operates the museum; Uccello’s family has also continued to promote initiatives related to his work.