Palazzo Cutò
Palazzo Cutò or Palazzo Aragona di Cutò is one of the large villas built in the early eighteenth century in Bagheria in the Province of Palermo near the ancient Via Consolare. Today it is located near the city's railway station.
History
Villa Aragona was built between 1712 and 1716 by Luigi Onofrio Naselli, Prince of Aragon, as a summer residence. The project was developed by the architect Giuseppe Mariani. In 1803 the villa was purchased by Alessandro Filangieri, 6th Prince of Cutò, and in this passage it became necessary to replace the family insignia: the monogram PC, Prince of Cutò, appears today on the main gate. In the early twentieth century, among the owners were Alessandro Tasca di Cutò, known as the Red Prince for his socialist sympathies, and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the future author of The Leopard and also related to the Filangeri di Cutò on his mother's side.In 1923, Giuseppe Tomasi sold the villa to some non-aristocratic families from Bagheria who retained ownership until 1987, the year in which the entire monumental complex was purchased by the Municipality.
Since 1983 the Municipality has pursued a program of acquisition and recovery which, until 1993, was directed by Antonio Belvedere, an architect from Bagheria. Since 1993 the works have been continued directly by the Superintendency of Cultural Heritage and by municipal technicians who are responsible for all the arrangement of the internal spaces. Currently the building has become the seat of the Francesco Scaduto Municipal Library, of the Pietro Piraino Toy Museum and with a thirty-year loan for use contract it is also the seat of the Michele Mancini University Multimedia Laboratory of the University of Palermo.