The House of Ciullo d'Alcamo is a residential building located in the town centre of
Alcamo
Alcamo (; scn, Àrcamu, italic=no) is the fourth-largest town and communes of Italy, commune of the Province of Trapani, Sicily, with a population of 44.925 inhabitants. It is on the borderline with the Metropolitan City of Palermo at a distan ...
, in the
province of Trapani
Trapani ( it, Provincia di Trapani, scn, Pruvincia di Tràpani; officially ''Libero consorzio comunale di Trapani'') is a province in the autonomous island region of Sicily, southern Italy. Following the suppression of the Sicilian provinces, it ...
, Italy.
History
The popular tradition assigns the property of this house to the poet
Ciullo d'Alcamo
Francesco Ciullo (born 30 September 1979 in Marghera) is an Italian Association football, professional footballer who plays as a Forward (association football), forward.
Football career
Ciullo started playing professional football in 1997 with h ...
; it is not easy to understand where this
hearsay
Hearsay evidence, in a legal forum, is testimony from an under-oath witness who is reciting an out-of-court statement, the content of which is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. In most courts, hearsay evidence is inadmiss ...
came from. Actually, they first tell about this house, which has nothing to do with
Ciullo d'Alcamo
Francesco Ciullo (born 30 September 1979 in Marghera) is an Italian Association football, professional footballer who plays as a Forward (association football), forward.
Football career
Ciullo started playing professional football in 1997 with h ...
, in 1854 in a list of sites of historical interest, belonging to the municipality of Alcamo, now missing.
It does not have any architectural characteristics of the 13th century, the period in which the poet lived, and who, more probably, was born in the old town set on
Mount Bonifato and called
Longaricum
Longaricum was an ancient Roman city in Sicily. It was on the inland road from Lilybaeum (modern Marsala) to Panormus (modern Palermo). Its precise location is not known with certainty, but current scholarship locates it tentatively near Camporeale ...
, rather than in the present town of Alcamo.
In 1892
Francesco Maria Mirabella
Francesco Maria Mirabella (Alcamo, 4 April 1850 – Alcamo, 27 December 1931) was an Italian historian, educator, and poet.
Biography
He was born in Alcamo (in the province of Trapani): his father was Ludovico Mirabella, an ebonist and sculptor ...
, a historian from Alcamo, asserted that the portal was to be assigned to the end of the 16th century, later than the poet’s period.
[Carlo Cataldo-Benedetto Barranca: Cielo e il contrasto sul suo monumento;Alcamo, Sarograf, 1996]
Today it belongs to the Lombardo family,
[Roberto Calia: I Palazzi dell'aristocrazia e della borghesia alcamese; Alcamo, Carrubba, 1997] who have restored the interior part, leaving both the portal and the window untouched.
Description
The characteristic elements of the façade are the portal and the window with circular arc above it: they both are realized with limestone travertinoide.
Above the portal there is a decoration in high relief, with a compass and a delineator in its middle,
[ between two big drakes ridden by two small angels with a ]trident
A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm.
The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other mari ...
in their hands.
See also
* Cielo d'Alcamo
Cielo d'Alcamo (; also spelled Ciullo) was an Italians, Italian poet, born in the early 13th century. He is considered one of the fathers of Italian medieval jester poetry. His traditional surname (which would mean "from Alcamo", a town in northwe ...
References
Sources
* Roberto Calia: I Palazzi dell'aristocrazia e della borghesia alcamese; Alcamo, Carrubba, 1997
* Carlo Cataldo-Benedetto Barranca: Cielo e il contrasto sul suo monumento;Alcamo, Sarograf, 1996
* Carlo Cataldo: Guida storico-artistica dei beni culturali di Alcamo, Calatafimi, Castellammare del Golfo, Salemi e Vita, Sarograf-Alcamo (1982)
* P.M. Rocca: di alcuni antichi edifici di Alcamo; Palermo, tip. Castellana-Di Stefano, 1905
* Giuseppe Polizzi: I monumenti di antichità e d'arte della provincia di Trapani; Trapani, Giovanni Modica Romano, 1879, p. 61
External links
Cielo e il_contrasto_sul_suo_monumento_04.pdf
{{coord missing, Italy
Buildings and structures in Alcamo
Buildings and structures completed in the 16th century
Monuments and memorials in Italy
16th-century establishments in Italy