Palazzo Valguarnera Gangi

Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi: the secret ballroom of “The Leopard”

Behind an austere facade on Piazza Croce dei Vespri, in the old Kalsa quarter of Palermo, hides one of Sicily’s most breathtaking interiors. The Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi is a private aristocratic residence whose great ballroom—a shimmering hall of mirrors, gilt and frescoed ceilings—has become world-famous as the setting of the ball that closes Luchino Visconti’s film masterpiece.

Unlike the palaces that have become museums, the Gangi remains a living family home, which is part of its mystique: to step inside is to enter a world of Sicilian nobility that has changed remarkably little in two and a half centuries.

An 18th-century masterpiece

The palace was built in several phases through the 18th century and completed around 1780 for the Valguarnera family, princes of Gangi. Its celebrated interior décor was largely realized around 1750 in an exuberant Rococo style associated with Marianna Valguarnera, with the finest local craftsmen producing furniture, stucco and gilding. Painted panels in the dining room are attributed to the Sicilian artist Giuseppe Velasco (Velasquez).

The ballroom and “Il Gattopardo”

The heart of the palace is its ballroom, its ceiling a swirl of allegorical fresco and its walls lined with mirrors that multiply the light of the chandeliers. In 1963, Visconti chose this room for the long, elegiac ball sequence of Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, with Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. The scene—an aristocracy waltzing on the edge of its own disappearance—made the room a place of pilgrimage for lovers of cinema and Sicilian history alike.

A living palace

The Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi is still used as a private residence, which is why it has never become an ordinary tourist attraction. The famous ballroom can be hired for private events, and some rooms may be seen on guided visits by advance reservation; the remainder of the house stays closed to the public. That scarcity only deepens the sense of stepping, briefly, into a Sicily that Lampedusa and Visconti mourned even as they immortalized it.

• Location: Piazza Croce dei Vespri, Kalsa quarter, Palermo, Sicily, Italy

• Built: 18th century, completed c. 1780; Valguarnera princes of Gangi

• Interior: Rococo décor c. 1750; dining-room paintings attrib. Giuseppe Velasco

• Fame: ballroom used for the ball scene of Visconti’s “Il Gattopardo” (1963)

• Status: private residence; ballroom hireable

• Visiting: some rooms by advance reservation only