Carceri dei Penitenziati

The ancient Prison of the Penitentiaries of the Inquisition Tribunal, in whose cells one can admire the graffiti left by the prisoners, which the historian Giuseppe Pitrè managed to save from complete destruction in the early twentieth century.

Introduction

At the end of the sixteenth century, the Court of the Holy Office obtained a larger headquarters, Palazzo Chiaromonte, and began a series of expansion and transformation interventions that, starting with the construction of the new prisons and the access gate from Piazza Marina, would configure a true citadel. The building, built on two floors, was designed in a simple and severe way almost to underline the dark character to which these rooms were intended.

History

During the restoration work carried out in the early twentieth century, the historian Giuseppe Pitrè managed to save from complete destruction the graffiti left by the prisoners of the Inquisition in some prison cells. He brought them to light in person, working with a chisel. The scholar from Palermo deciphered, under several layers of plaster, figures, drawings, inscriptions and verses. A delicate work of rediscovery has brought to light, from those dark, cold and humid cells, paintings and signs full of suffering with writings in Italian, dialect, Latin and even English, giving back a voice and name to those who had been forgotten for too long.

The restoration project, started in 2002 and entirely drawn up by technicians from the University, has returned the rooms to their original spatiality, freeing them from the numerous additions and superfetation that over the centuries had distorted their identity.
A campaign of archaeological excavations between the foundations of the seventeenth-century building, conducted between 2003 and 2008, has brought to light the remains of a large semi-underground room with a vaulted ceiling with ribs, presumably from the same construction period as Palazzo Chiaramonte, which can be visited via the ancient staircase, largely restored. The remains of a factory for the production of terracotta and glass artefacts from the Norman period were discovered during the same campaign. Characteristic is the presence of five circular furnaces and a square cooling tank.