Description
Palazzo del Toscano is the austere 19th-century stone palace at the corner of Piazza Stesicoro and Via Etnea, in Catania: the residence of the Paternò, Marquises of Toscano, a family on the rise in newly unified Italy.
The ground floor keeps the white and black stone arches of Giovan Battista Vaccarini's first 18th-century design, which stopped at the second floor. Above it rises the Neo-Renaissance facade designed around 1870 by Errico Alvino, a Milanese architect working in Naples, which soon inspired other palaces in the city.
Antonino Paternò inherited it in 1858 and, despite the Bourbon loyalty he had declared until shortly before, became Catania's first mayor. His son Giovanbattista, also a mayor, had the grand staircase decorated with marble and frescoes, calling in painters such as Giuseppe Sciuti and Alessandro Abate.
The ground floor keeps the white and black stone arches of Giovan Battista Vaccarini's first 18th-century design, which stopped at the second floor. Above it rises the Neo-Renaissance facade designed around 1870 by Errico Alvino, a Milanese architect working in Naples, which soon inspired other palaces in the city.
Antonino Paternò inherited it in 1858 and, despite the Bourbon loyalty he had declared until shortly before, became Catania's first mayor. His son Giovanbattista, also a mayor, had the grand staircase decorated with marble and frescoes, calling in painters such as Giuseppe Sciuti and Alessandro Abate.