2 Best Sights in Bagheria, Sicily

One of Bagheria's most impressive palaces, Villa Cattolica has been meticulously renovated and converted into a gallery devoted to the artist Renato Guttuso (1911–87), who was born in the town. Guttuso's fierce, expressionist style and vivid sense of color made him one of Sicily's most renowned modern artists, and the gallery traces his career from his earliest sketches in the 1920s and 1930s to his later bold canvases, including his last work, a huge collective portrait of his mistresses and muses. Guttuso started his career painting carretti (farmer's carts) in the traditional style and the first rooms feature a collection of painted carts. The gallery also hosts work by Guttuso's peers and contemporaries, and a separate building holds an exhibition of Italian film posters, including one for the film Kaos, designed by Guttuso. The artist's tomb lies in the villa's garden.

Unarguably the most intriguing of all Bagheria's villas is the Villa Palagonia, which can either be viewed as a delightful flight of whimsy or the product of a disturbed mind. The villa was erected in 1705 by Francesco, Prince of Palagonia, and his architect, Tommaso Napoli, but what makes it stand out today is the work of Francesco's grandson, Ferdinando, a hunchback who commissioned a weird assembly of sculptures depicting monsters and bizarre figures said to be caricatures of his wife's lovers. Visitors will see a parade of them on either side of the front and back entrances as well as atop the walls of the surrounding garden, a grotesque gallery of monsters, gnomes, and gargoyles. Only 64 of the original statues remain—they are once said to number 200—and these are in a poor state of repair.

You'll find the same air of dereliction when you climb the once-grand double staircase to enter the palace itself, where only five rooms are currently open to the public. Most striking of these is the Salone degli Specchi, a large hall whose domed ceiling is covered in mirrors, now cracked and fogged. Along the marbled walls here and in other rooms are arrayed flamboyant busts, faded frescoes, and trompe l'oeil effects that recall the grandeur that the villa must once have embodied, though you'll come away with a sense of wistful regret that more care has not been taken to restore and maintain this peculiar place.