The Monachelli were not nobles: they were a priest who also acted as a notary and a notary who became mayor. In a few decades, between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they put together the largest holdings in Bolognetta by lending money at interest and collecting the security of those who could not pay it back. This palace is the house they built themselves.
What to see
The first trace of the family is in a census of 1714: a master Lorenzo Monachello, resident in Palermo but with land in these parts, on which he pays taxes. From there the climb is swift: with a shrewd marriage strategy they become related to the local marquises and, once feudalism had officially ended, they took over their goods.
By the end of the nineteenth century the last three brothers owned about a hundred houses and the major palaces of the old town, and let out or sharecropped nearly all the estates. The last of them, Giuseppe, was called u signurinu in the village, and never married so as not to divide the property: with his death in 1962 the Monachelli era ends. Today the palace belongs to the municipality and has become a cultural centre.
Visiting
The palace is in via Garibaldi, in the centre of Bolognetta, half an hour from Palermo; it houses the cultural centre and a tourist information point, so you go in during service hours. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Look up, at the terrace: there is an iron lookout post with a spiral staircase, added in the sixties. It was not there to admire the view, it was there to keep an eye from a distance on the men working in the fields. It is a small, ugly object that explains a whole economic system better than any document.