Corvaja Palace

Palazzo Corvaja stands in the area of the Greek Agorà, which later became the Roman Forum. On one side it faces "Piazza Badia" and "Corso Umberto" on the other side "Piazza Santa Caterina". The palace represents three distinct historical moments of the city of Taormina. In 1948 the building was restored by architect Armando Dillon. During the restoration, he analysed each architectural element of the palace deducing its historical evolution. The central core of the palace is characterized by a crenelated cubic tower, which shape and orientation resemble Mecca's sacred "Al Ka Bah", originally built by the Arabs between 902 and 1079 for defensive purposes.

The tower, immediately visible upon entering the main portal, is located in the courtyard and can be accessed via the staircase. Its construction dates back to the 14 th century and includes two noncommunicating, superimposed square rooms, one on the ground floor and one on the first. The tower was originally composed by two rooms, each located on a different floor and protected by a roof-terrace built on top of the pre-existing wall alignments. In 1209, Don Juan Termes accompanied Queen "Costanza di Aragona", "Federico II Di Svevia"’s first wife, to Sicily and received possession of the arab tower, which would go on to have a secondary structure built on its left side in the 1300's, almost a century later. At the end of the 1300's, a new building called "Ala del Maestro Giustiziere" was added on the left side of the tower where crimes were judged and verdicts were executed. Termes' heirs worked in this fourteenth-century wing thanks to the role of Master Executioner, entrusted to Don Juan by the king.

Above the entrance door you can see the Termes' three starred family crest, attesting their ownership over the building in which they exercised judiciary duties. The external balustrade of the access staircase leading to the upper floor of the palace, moved by Dillon (1945-48) to its current location, is decorated with three Syracuse stone panels. The first one represents the creation of Eve while Adam sleeps. The second one is Adam's original sin alongside Eve and the tree with the forbidden fruit. The third one shows the expulsion of Eve from the garden of Eden and the condemnation of man to work. In the courtyard, under an elegant mullioned window is the fourteenth-century latin phrase "ESTO MICHI...LOCU REFUGI". During the 1400's, a new room was built on the right of the two pre-existing buildings.

On September 25th, 1411, where the Sicilian Parliament, presided by the Spanish Queen "Bianca di Navarra", who ruled Sicily after the death of her husband Martin II, met. The hall is illuminated by four mullioned windows and one three-mullioned one. The building's layout is irregular, most likely due to the accelerated construction process. It was built on top of pre-existing walls belonging to the Roman Forum. In the early 1400's a large hall overlooking Piazza Vittorio Emanuele was built to the right of the arab tower. The new structure was completed in 1411 at the initiative of Antonio Termes, governor of the Reginal Chamber under Queen "Bianca di Navarra", widow of King "Martino il Giovane (The Young)" who summoned the Sicilian Parliament to accept the succession of his young son. The fifteenth-century hall, merged with the two existing buildings, features an horizontal band running along the three external sides.

On this band is the inscription in Gothic letters that starts at the southern side containing multiple sentences alluding to the four cardinal virtues: "Deum diligere prudencia est eum adorare iusticia", followed by a double angular three-starred family crest (Termes crest), then "nullis in adversis ab eo abstrahi fortitudo est" on the facade. "Nullis in illecebris emoliri temperantia est et in his sunt actus v (ir) tutu (m)", meaning "Prudence is to love God", "Justice is to imitate Jesus", "Strength is to not be torn away from him during adversity", "Temperance is to not be weakened by temptations "," And these are the acts of virtue ". A Martial pentameter can be spotted on the corner facing Porta Messina ("Par domus est coelo sed minor est Domino", which means "The building is equal to the sky, but inferior to the Lord"). Around the 1500's a connecting corridor was built between the fifteenth-century room and the fourteenth-century room (see the "Rosso di Cerami" family crest, who lived in the palace for a period of time at the end of the fifteenth century) where still today it's possible to admire eighteenth-century frescoes telling the story of the prophet Daniel.

From 1538 to 1945, the building was owned by the Corvaja, a family of Spanish origin, from which the palace took its name. In 1938 the Corvaja restored the palace for a second time. In 1945, Taormina’s local government expropriated the building for reasons of public interest. After several transformations, the palace was restored in 1946 by architect Armando Dillon following the Sicilian flowery gothic style. In 1950, an octagonal room was built by the architect Giuseppe Sivieri next to the fourteenth-century building.