The Palazzo della Provincia e della Prefettura of Agrigento is a historic building in piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, dating from 1858. It is distinguished by an imposing entrance portal framed by two columns and by two elegant balconies on both main façades.
What to see
It was one of the first nineteenth-century buildings put up outside the city's historic walls and it contributed to changing Agrigento's urban layout, marking the beginning of the development of the modern centre. The area chosen had previously been land known for its stazzoni, craft workshops making jugs and terracotta objects. The first stone was laid on 16 May 1858 and the palace was conceived as the seat of the Reale Ospizio di Beneficenza of Agrigento, a charitable institution tied to the clergy; after the Unification of Italy, with the suppression of ecclesiastical bodies and the confiscation of clergy property, the project changed radically: the building, still under construction, was assigned first to the State Archive and finally to the offices of the Province and the Prefecture.
The palace faces onto via Gioeni, piazza Vittorio Emanuele II and piazzale Aldo Moro. It has a regular quadrangular plan and five levels; each floor opens onto an inner courtyard loggia with three columns per side, while the fifth and top floor occupies only part of the surface and has no outward views. Among the works of art kept here are the old Altarpiece of San Domenico and the Altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin among the saints, both of the seventeenth century.
Visiting
The palace is in piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, in the centre of Agrigento, and is the seat of the Libero consorzio comunale of Agrigento and of the Prefecture. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The palace was inaugurated with a symbolic act: on 31 August 1869 the Council Chamber hosted the meeting of the Consortium of the Sicilian Provinces, which confirmed its installation as the administrative and political centre of the new unified reality.
