Battaglia Palace a Ragusa
The Palazzo Battaglia di Ragusa represents one of the most interesting examples of civil architecture of the Iblean Baroque.
It was built in 1724 at the behest of Baron Battaglia di Torrevecchia, in 1748 his son Giovanni Paolo, wishing to expand the building, began the construction of the northern wing. Giovanni Paolo Battaglia died without heirs and therefore the property passed to his sister Vincenza who in the meantime had married the baron Giampiccolo di Cammarana. The building is in fact also known as Palazzo Giampiccolo.
The building has the unusual feature of having two main façades, one in the small square along Via Orfanotrofio and the other on an open space along Via Chiaramonte. It also has an overpass that connects it to the nearby church of the Santissima Annunziata on which the Battaglia family exercised the jus patronatus.
The building has a quadrangular plan and preserves the two facades intact.
On the facade of via Orfanotrofio the ground floor and the upper floor is separated by a stone string course; on the ground floor there is the imposing entrance portal, flanked by two large windows, while on the upper noble floor there are three balconies. Above the balcony, at the end of the eighteenth century, a coat of arms was placed on which stand a rampant lion and a hoisted horse, heraldic symbols of the two families: Battaglia di Torrevecchia and Giampiccolo di Cammarana.
The facade of via Chiaramonte is characterized by a large grandstand balcony connected to the underlying entrance door by a very particular molding bearing in the center an oval window richly decorated with festoons of leaves. The large balcony is supported by elegant volute shelves; on the balcony there are two French windows with rich moldings in the middle of which there is a window with an unusual heart shape.
The interiors have the traditional barrel and cross vaults in limestone or reeds and plaster, the floors in limestone with inserts in pitch or in Caltagirone ceramics, the internal walls with stuccoes and frescoes.
The building is still in a good state of conservation today and retains its period furnishings.
