Palazzo Lampedusa in Palermo, Sicily, is known for being the home of the writer and aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The estate had belonged to his family since the mid-18th century. In Places of My Early Childhood, the well-known writer describes Palazzo Lampedusa and praises its beauty, which lasted “until 5 April 1943, the day it was reached and destroyed by bombs brought from across the Atlantic.” Destroyed by Allied bombing during the Second World War, Palazzo Lampedusa remained in a state of disrepair for seventy years.
In 2010, the studio ‘PL5-ARCHITETTURA’ developed a restoration project and raised funds from 35 people who wanted to support the mission to save the house of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, with whom he had a deep bond, as he himself wrote in his book ‘I Racconti’. In ‘Lighea’, the writer’s pain at the loss he suffered is revealed in the words ‘the liberators destroyed my house’.
It was therefore decided to restore all the surviving fragments, leaving them as unaltered as possible as a trace of a dramatic event in the writer’s life. Work began in 2011 and was completed in 2015. The overall layout of the palace was re-proposed and it was decided to ensure that the appearance would be reminiscent of the former residence from the 18th century. However, steps were taken to ensure that the building could be directly linked to the present, with contemporary inserts in classical language that characterise the entire development. This includes the sequence of porticoes with columns without bases or capitals, the railings of some of the terraces in screen-printed glass and the floors in all the common areas, made of traditional materials but in a contemporary style.
The people who undertook the restoration of Palazzo Lampedusa deserve a huge round of applause for their willingness and effort to raise this historic property from ruin, seven decades after its destruction. The manner of the restoration, not entirely faithful to the original state, can be controversial and undermine the integrity and fidelity of the original. However, the contemporary and ahistorical elements fit quite well into the reconstructed edifice and, in sum, it is immensely gratifying that Palazzo Lampedusa has risen from ruin and is once again a home, as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa liked to call it.
Source: Architettura in Rivolta, pl5architettura.it
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