Palazzo Branciforte

The history

The history of Palazzo Branciforte is closely tied with the city of Palermo

and has been ever since it was built, probably at the end of the sixteenth century, as noble house by Nicolò Placido Branciforte Lanza, Count of Raccuja.

The Count of Raccuja’s heirs built an extension in the mid-seventeenth century, having been given permission by the Palermo Senate to incorporate the road within the grounds; on completion, at the beginning of the next century, its surface area had almost doubled; the old Palazzo Raccuja, also known as Pietraperzia and Butera, became one of the grandest aristocratic residences in the city.

In 1801, the government asked the Branciforte family to lease the entire building to the Palermo Senate, to house the new “Monte della Pietà per la Pignorazione”, which at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed more space to store the growing number of objects being pawned, as a result of the difficult economic situation.
The credit organization, where loans were given on a pledge of silk and linen, and later copper and bronze objects, was called “Monte dei Pegni di Santa Rosalia”, although for the majority of the people in Palermo it was familiarly known as “old clothes”, an obvious reference to the content.

During the Revolution of January 1848 a fire, caused by a bomb, brought a radical change to the inside of the old building: restoration work did not include the floors that had collapsed, so that the areas on the second and third floors of the building were incorporated into one high room.
Wooden shelves, ladders and small platforms were built all the way up to store objects. This bold structure, today still in perfect condition and stripped of covering material, is universally recognized as a rare surviving example of an architectural composition in wood.

In 1929, after nearly four hundred years of activity, the old credit institution was taken over by the Cassa Centrale di Risparmio “Vittorio Emanuele per le Province Siciliane”.
During the Second World War, the structure was again damaged several times during the bombings. The building that belonged to the Branciforte continued to be used to pawn non-precious goods until the early 1980s, when it became the venue for the Fondazione Chiazzese, the Archivio Storico and the Library of the Cassa di Risparmio.

In the late nineties, the Cassa di Risparmio was acquired by Banco di Sicilia SpA and Palazzo Branciforte became a training centre for bank staff, a function it continued to carry out even after the incorporation of Banco di Sicilia in the Capitalia Group.
Finally, on December 30, 2005, Palazzo Branciforte was acquired by the Fondazione Banco di Sicilia.
In May 2012, having been completely restored to its former glory thanks to the work of the architect Gae Aulenti, the building was reopened to the public as a major new cultural centre.