An unusual view of Carlo Scarpa, in his work on the transformation of Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo to create the headquarters of the Galleria nazionale: one of the first and most brilliant lessons in museum design by the refined Venetian architect.
Carlo Scarpa (Venice 1906 – Sendai 1978) was used to working slowly, making frequent revisions. But when he was commissioned, in 1953, to renovate Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, a prestigious building from the last decade in the 1400s, on a schedule that was very tight by his standards he was able to make the resulting Galleria nazionale di Sicilia into one of the most impressive museums in Italy, taking the opportunity to transmit a brilliant lesson in museum design. In this volume, containing illustrations and documents never published before, the authors reconstruct all the aspects of Scarpa’s work at Palazzo Abatellis, outlining the chronology of the project and offering the possibility of easy access to materials stored in archives. The results of their research confirm the extraordinary importance of the work of architecture in question; the gallery represents a fundamental step in the activity of the Venetian architect, one of the acknowledged protagonists of the history of 20th-century architecture in Italy.