It all began with a man who wanted to be left alone: in 1658 Prince Giuseppe Branciforti, a former viceroy of Sicily, finished building his palace here to keep court life away from the family castle, and the town grew out of the houses of his servants — it was called Raccuja Nuova. Then the Palermo aristocracy followed his lead 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 disconcerted even Goethe when he visited in 1787.
The name, they say, comes from the Phoenician Bayharia, the land that descends toward the sea, and that is exactly what it does: the plain slides down from Monte Catalfano and Monte Irice to the Tyrrhenian. Bagheria is the city of villas — Palagonia and Valguarnera were designed by Tommaso Napoli — and after Palermo it is the most populous comune in its metropolitan city. Villa Cattolica houses the museum of Renato Guttuso, the painter born here in 1911 and buried in its park; it is also the town told by Giuseppe Tornatore in «Baarìa» and by Dacia Maraini. Ten minutes away, the two seas of Aspra and Mongerbino, whose quarries gave the stone for the villas; twenty minutes away, Palermo.
Villa Palagonia · Villa Valguarnera · Palazzo Cutò and 8 more
Sfincione · Arancina · Pasta alla Norma
23 places to stay · top rated: La Dimora dei Paladini 9.5 · Butera 505-Luxury Suites 9.5
Next up: Feast of Saint Joseph, Sunday 1 August
Nearest airport: Palermo Falcone-Borsellino, 37 km away
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📅 Every year, on the first Sunday of August (Saint Joseph's day is 19 March)
Bagheria's patron is Saint Joseph, whose day is 19 March, but the town celebrates him on the first Sunday of August: a week of shows and fireworks on the Monday evening.
Villa Palagonia Bagheria's villa of the monsters, which unsettled Goethe and entered Faust. 
Villa Valguarnera Eighteenth-century villa in Bagheria begun in 1712: key-shaped plan, frescoed salons and the Montagnola hill. Palazzo Cutò Large early eighteenth-century villa in Bagheria: rooftop belvedere, two-flight staircase, frescoes of 1726. 
chiesa della Natività della Beata Vergine Maria Mother Church of Bagheria, dedicated to the Nativity of Mary: built for the Branciforti, completed in 1771. Monte Porcara 388-metre mountain above Bagheria: walls and necropolis of a Hellenised indigenous settlement, perhaps ancient 
Museo del giocattolo Pietro Piraino Bagheria museum of toys and waxes: dolls, automata, tin toys and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wax sculpt Tall, soft bread dough, tomato, onion, anchovies, oregano and caciocavallo: sfincione is Palermo's focaccia, cut into squares.
Read more →Saffron rice, ragù with peas and caciocavallo cheese inside a golden crust. Round and feminine in Palermo, pointed and called arancino in Catania: the quarrel is serious.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Bagheria, but an easy day trip away.
