PALAZZO REBURDONE

Palazzo Reburdone has the typical scheme of Patrician palaces of Catania: a ground floor with shops reachable from the street and storehouses and service premises on the courtyard; the first floor is used for management or given for rent for economical and social reasons to low-rank families that belong to the Guttadauro family; the second floor or noble floor, where the master and his family lived; the third floor or cadet floor was used to house the servants and the cadets. All these rooms were distributed around the court of Honour, one of the largest ones in Catania, finished with a great staircase inside a body with a double portico (considered to be designed by Vaccarini in the past, but later by Battaglia, for stylistic and chronological reasons). Another courtyard on the west side, served the hirsewoman and the other service premises. The noble floor is reached by the great staircase, which leads to the two wings of the palace, each wing with a number of rooms along a hallway that ends in two large living rooms, to shut the Prince's apartment with its Turkish alcove at the center of the front, opened on the tribune of honour on the main gate, symbol of the dynastic continuity of the family. The two living-room twins follow the diapason ratio: two perfect cubes placed one close to the other and break by its vaults the cadet floor's attic, the corresponding balconies of which aren't praticable for this reason; the two vaults show frescoes by Sebastiano Lo Monaco (east living-room) and neoclassical frescoes (west living-room).