Piccolo Villa in Capo D'Orlando
Villa Piccolo, located on the hills of Capo d’Orlando, is a historic residence with an adjoining park and house-museum, dating back to the end of the 9th century.
It was the home of the three Piccolo brothers, sons of Baron Giuseppe Piccolo di Calanovella and Teresa Mastrogiovanni Tasca Filangeri di Cutò: the poet Lucio Piccolo, the painter and photographer Casimiro Piccolo and Agata Giovanna, expert in botanical studies.
The rooms that make up the museum of Villa Piccolo display the objects of the characters who lived here in the different environments: the room of the poet Lucio collects his photos and the first prints of his poems; Casimiro's room has his photos and his photographic equipment, along with palettes, watercolors of a fantastic genre; the room of Agata Giovanna, with its pink candelabra and its embroideries, offers the visitor the view of a copy of his only publication on the study of the Puya Berteroniana, the only example in Europe present and alive at Villa Piccolo.
A very visited is that of the guests, who had as a regular guest in the summer periods, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of the Leopard and first cousin of the Piccolo. His mother Beatrice, in fact, was the sister of Teresa Mastrogiovanni. Several famous pages of the novel were written here and it was from Villa Piccolo, after the death of Lampedusa, that Lucio Piccolo sent Mondadori the original typescript of the Leopard, which was then rejected, before finally being published by Feltrinelli.
Nel parco, deserves one mention the "dog cemetery", in which the dogs and cats of the family are buried. In all there are 35 small tombs, which the Piccolo family wanted to reserve for their pets.
The exedra on which a large stone seat is placed is also of particular interest, where Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Lucio Piccolo, in the shade of a large maritime pine, renamed the "pine of Lampedusa".
