Audiotur The historical-Risorgimento section and the nineteenth-century gallery

The historical-Risorgimento section and the nineteenth-century gallery

The historical-Risorgimento section hosts memories and relics that tell the story of the city from the early nineteenth century until its annexation to the unitary state. The vast environment is dominated by the Bourbon era Guillotine, which previously belonged to the collections of the Municipality of Trapani, a macabre instrument of death that was active throughout the province from 1842 until the early 1860s. Of particular note is the large commercial banner with red and white stripes of the steamship "Il Lombardo", which belonged to the "Rubattino" shipping company, on which Giuseppe Garibaldi embarked in May 1860 on the occasion of the expedition that took him from Quarto to Marsala . The precious heirloom, recovered immediately after the landing of the Thousand on the beach of Marsala by Gaspare Burgarella from Trapani, was sold by the Burgarella heirs to Count Pepoli, a tireless collector of historical memories. Worthy of particular note are the marble busts of the fathers of our Risorgimento, Garibaldi, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour and Vittorio Emanuele II, the work of the Ticino sculptor Vincenzo Vela.

A small room adjacent to the room houses some paintings by Sicilian painters active between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: among these, some canvases by Giuseppe Errante from Trapani, which show the evolution of his style from Rococo to Neoclassicism, and some portraits by Giuseppe Patania from Palermo: the Queen Maria Cristina of Savoy, wife of Ferdinand II of Bourbon, in her icy and aristocratic beauty, the Marquis Vincenzo Fardella of Torrearsa, protagonist of the 1948 uprisings in Sicily and General Giovan Battista Fardella, meritorious founder of the first city art gallery.