Palazzo Florio

Commissioned in 1874 and begun two years later on the site of part of an old coastal fort, Palazzo Florio carried the wealth of Palermo's great industrial family to Favignana. Its ballroom, billiard room and guest floors preserve the character of a Favignana residence, and the municipality's account records the house's unusual history.

Why it matters

Small islands rarely receive architecture like this. In 1874 Ignazio Florio senior, fresh from buying the Aegadian Islands, engaged the architect Giuseppe Damiani Almeyda to design a country house on Favignana, and construction began two years later on ground that had formed part of Fort San Leonardo, as the municipality records. Damiani Almeyda was a major figure — the architect-engineer whose family papers in Palermo are considered important enough to be documented by Italy's national archival council — and the villa he drew here translated the tastes of the Palermo bourgeoisie into medieval-revival forms on an island of fishermen and tuna workers. The Ex Stabilimento, the Florio family's former tuna factory, preserves the industrial counterpart to this domestic history.

What to notice

The villa was planned as a machine for island hospitality, and the municipality's description lets you read the social order floor by floor. The piano nobile gathered the reception rooms: dining room, ballroom with its coffered ceiling, billiard room and library. Above it lay the family's private apartments; above those, a guest floor with nine bedrooms, a salon, a fumoir and a panoramic terrace, where visiting friends of the Florios took their air and their view. Service life — kitchens, pantry, coal and wood stores — was pushed down into the basement. Damiani Almeyda's design plays with style: the municipality describes him drawing on the medieval-revival fashions of the nineteenth century, so look out for the Gothic-inflected detailing set against the very modern comfort of a leisure villa. The rooftop terrace offers a view of the island from the private vantage once enjoyed by the Florios.

Context and history

The house belongs to the period when the Egadi were a private estate of an industrial dynasty. Ignazio Florio reached his island on his own yacht, the Mary Queen, according to the municipal account — the sea was the road, and the villa its destination. After his death in 1891 the property passed to his sons Ignazio and Vincenzo, who kept it in the family's orbit. Its most poignant recorded chapter belongs to that next generation: Donna Franca, the family's celebrated figure, stayed at the villa for long periods after losing her young children Giovannuzza and a baby boy in 1902 and 1903, and the municipality presents the house as a refuge during those years. The villa and former tuna plant preserve complementary sides of the Florio family's history on Favignana: domestic life and industry.