A Catalan Gothic style setting for exhibitions and events
Built in 1412, Palazzo Ciampoli stands in the center of Taormina as a cultural center where you can take part in events and exhibitions of great historical-artistic interest.
Notices(1)
- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
From 7 August 2024 to October 2025 Palazzo Ciampoli hosts the exhibition "From Tauromenion to Tauromenium. The invisible city between history and archaeology". Entrance to the exhibition is included in the entrance ticket to the Palace.
Reductions(2)
For REDUCED and FREE tickets, documentation certifying the right to use this ticket will be requested. If it is not demonstrated it will be necessary to purchase a FULL ticket.
Free
17types- •Visitors under the age of eighteen. Under-twelves must be accompanied by an adult
- •Disabled persons and one family member or companion who can show their membership to health and care services.
- •European Union tourist guides in the exercise of their professional activity, presenting a valid licence issued by the competent authority
- •Tour interpreters from the European Union working alongside the guide, upon presentation of a valid licence issued by the competent authority
- •Permanent staff of the Sicilian Regional Department for Cultural Heritage and Identity
- •Members of I.C.O.M. (International Council of Museums)
- •Groups of students from public and private schools in the European Union accompanied by their teachers, subject to prior booking and within the quota established by venue management
- •Students on advanced training courses at the Ministry's Schools (Central Institute for Restoration. Opificio delle Pietre Dure. Mosaic Restoration School) and courses at the Regional Centre for Planning and Restoration
- •Teachers and students enrolled in Fine Arts Academies or corresponding institutes of the European Union, by showing their enrolment certificate for the current academic year
- •Lecturers and students on degree courses, specialist degree courses or post-graduate specialisation and PhD courses in the following faculties: architecture, conservation of cultural heritage, education sciences or literature and philosophy with an archaeological or historical-artistic focus. The same benefits are due to teachers and students of corresponding universities or courses, present in the European Union States.
- •Journalists who have regularly paid their membership fees, and who present suitable documents proving their professional activity (DDG n.1109 of 7/09/2019 DG-Musei).
- •Operators of volunteer associations working at the premises through agreements with the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity
- •Teaching staff -permanent school or with a fixed-term contract- of the Italian school, upon presentation of a suitable certificate issued by the educational institutions. The certificate is annual and valid for the academic year in progress.
- •Honorary Inspectors of Cultural Heritage in Sicily
- •Members of the military of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit
- •Members of the I.C.C.R.O.M. (International Centre for the Study of the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage)
- •Italian and foreign scholars for study or research purposes certified by Italian or foreign school or university institutions, academies, research and culture institutes as well as by the Ministry, for particular and justified needs, the Directors can allow individual subjects who request it free admission for specific periods.
Reduced
2types- •EU citizens aged between 18 and 25 (the age limit is considered exceeded from the day following the completion of the 25th year of age).
- •Members of FAI
Description
From the 15th to the 21st century: 500 years of history
Palazzo Ciampoli was built in 1412 in Catalan Gothic style. The date appears in the coat of arms contained in the rhombus above the main portal, but the existence of two identical coats of arms, the shield with the flag and the shield with three stars, both in Palazzo Ciàmpoli and in Palazzo Corvaja, has led us to believe that in the past the mansion had belonged to the Corvaja family. Furthermore, the flag blowing in the wind above the entrance portal (heraldry of the Damiano Rosso) and the starry shield that closes the corner of the string course (heraldry of the De Thermes) suggests that these two families have something to do with the birth of building. Perhaps they were the ones who started the construction before the second order with Hispanicizing connotations was built in the mid-15th century.
The mansion then took the name of Ciàmpoli from the family who maintained ownership until it was purchased by the Sicilian Region. All the noble homes of Taormina were built within the fortified perimeter, with the exception of Palazzo Ciàmpoli, built along the Via Consolare Valeria, in the medieval village of the city which once extended from the Clock Tower to Porta Catania, inside the city walls, near the Cathedral.
The date of 1412, however, marked the decline of the Latin party in Sicily, Chiaramontano and the advent of the Catalan party. And the palaces and churches lost their characteristic fortress structure to become elegant residences.
Palazzo Ciàmpoli stands, almost haughtily, with a simple and elegant façade marked by battlements and with five mullioned windows resting on a two-tone string course of rare beauty, worked with small rosettes, with inlays of lava stone and Syracuse stone. The structure shows only its main façade, which rests on a wide and steep staircase, its natural base; The east façade is also very beautiful, hidden, almost invisible, intimate and reserved.
In the garden of the palace, in 1926, the Palazzo Vecchio hotel was born, so called because, in its architecture, it vaguely recalled that of the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence.
