In the eighteenth century Palermo's aristocracy chose Bagheria for its country retreats, and the countryside filled with Baroque villas: the most famous is Villa Palagonia, with its stone monsters — hundreds of grotesque figures along the boundary wall — which unsettled even Goethe on his 1787 visit. Villa Cattolica now houses the museum of Renato Guttuso, the painter born here in 1911 and buried in its park.
Bagheria is also the town told by Giuseppe Tornatore in "Baarìa" and by writer Dacia Maraini. Ten minutes away, the shores of Aspra and Mongerbino; twenty, Palermo.
Near Bagheria
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
