Palazzo Lanza Tomasi

The palace was built at the end of the seventeenth century on Spanish ramparts, fortifications erected to defend against attacks and raids perpetrated by pirate or corsair crews, in the historical context in which the primary need to ensure naval supremacy in the Mediterranean prevailed. In 1849, Prince Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi di Lampedusa, an amateur astronomer, bought it with the compensation paid to him by the crown for the expropriation of the island of Lampedusa. The De Pace owners bought half of the palace in 1862 and transformed it according to the taste of the time, creating the grand entrance staircase and the cherry and walnut parquet flooring for the ballroom. In 1948 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, after the loss of the family palace in the bombings of 22 March and 5 April 1943, bought the property back from the De Pace family and lived there until his death in 1957. Today, it is the residence of the musicologist Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi and his consort, the duchess Nicoletta Polo Lanza Tomasi. The writer\'s adopted son reunited the entire property and completed a complete restoration of the building.