Enna heart of Sicily and enchantment of millenary history...

Alessi Museum

Open daily from 8.00 a.m. to 20.00 p.m. Admittance ticket € 2.58 (full) € 1.55( half-price)

 

The museum behind the Dome apse houses some archeological evidences, coins and prints belonged to the Canonical Giuseppe Alessi, who had collected them in a period between the XVIII and XIX centuries. In 1860 the collections were given to the Main church by the priest’s heirs and from 1987, they are exposed in the present Museum which takes its name from the canonical. Besides the inheritance of G.Alessi, the Museum’s rooms are enriched by the Dome ‘s treasure , by the work coming from other Enna’s churches and monasteries and by the gifts of Enna’s families.The two rooms of the first floor are characterized by many pictures, essentially by anonymous from the XVI and XVIII age.

The little room of connection among these two rooms, shows, on the contrary works of Enna’s artists of the two last centuries. Saverio Marchese, Paolo Vetri, Apollonio Di Bilio, Luigi Gallina and Sebastiano Sberna. Going upstairs to the first floor we reach the Dome’s treasure, to the little coffer’s room, so called because it houses the metal coffer (1773) that preserved the Dome’s silver and golds. In the little room aside it’s exposed the crown of the Virgin Mary of the Visitation, enriched by rubyies and diamonds, excellently made by some goldsmiths of the XVII century. Still on the first floor, another showroom shows among other things, a set of silver hanging lamps of the eighteenth century, two candlesticks by Nibilio Gagini and Pietro Rizzo (1595), reliquaries, a majestic ostensory of 1524 by Paolo Gili and a bust of Saint Rosalia assigned to a 17th century silver smith in Palermo. The second floor , on the contrary, houses numismatics, archaeology and prints. We can go through the history of the civilizations that had left their vestiges in Sicily, through their coins; the Museum Alessi has got more than two thousand coins(siculo-puniche and greek-sicule), some roman and bizantine coins and some modern medals. As for the picture-gallery, of particular interest are “ Saint Michael on the Turkishs” by Giuseppe Salerno and a late-Byzantine disposition.