Ground floor
On the ground floor, in the old 18th-century rooms, once used as stables and warehouses for tools and carriages transformed into exhibition spaces, the itinerary includes works of contemporary art, but in all the rooms there is a strong blend of art, history, culture and nature.
In these spaces can be admired:
The archive
The large archive room, dating from 1795, whose furniture has been fully restored, now become the palace bookshop.
In ancient times it contained records and documents related to the management and administration of the Branciforti family’s fiefs.
Contemporary art
Contemporary artworks from the Valsecchi collection and site-specific installations created by artists Anne and Patrick Poirier specifically for the palace.
The new staircase and walkway
The new staircase and overhead walkway made of iron and glass, one of the iconic features of the architectural intervention project.
The cavallerizza
The “cavallerizza,” with its Billiemi stone columns and part of the original basalt, is the most monumental room on the ground floor: in eighteenth-century palaces in Palermo, great importance was attached to the place reserved for carriages and horses.
The Jacaranda root
The arrangement of the Jacaranda root, grown in a drain covered with tiles, is a testimony to plant intelligence, highlighted by the iron and glass flooring design of the hall.