Art Nouveau

Encounter with Art Nouveau: a last salute to Villa Pottino in Palermo. Dream of rebirth for Villa Deliella

During the scheduled visits on Sunday 25 January, curator Prof. Andrea Speziali will explain the main highlights of the eighth edition of the 'Art Nouveau Week' festival

24 January 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

A final farewell to Villa Pottino in Palermo, one of the most significant and now rare examples of Palermo's early 20th century Art Nouveau. On Sunday 25 January, starting at 11.00 a.m., the historic residence will exceptionally open its doors for an event organised by the Associazione Italia Liberty, which combines a guided tour, historical remembrance and the presentation of new cultural projects: from the eighth edition of the "Art Nouveau Week" festival to the creative project for an art installation on the ground where Villa Deliella once stood. The noble residence of the Deliella princes, the villa of the same name, built in 1905 in Art Nouveau style and located in Piazza Francesco Crispi in Palermo, was demolished in 1959 during the so-called sack of Palermo.

Villa Pottino, an emblematic example of the Sicilian modernist season, represents one of the last vestiges of the architectural 'great beauty' that characterised Palermo in the early decades of the 20th century, when Art Nouveau dialogued with European currents while adapting to the Mediterranean context.The day's programme includes a guided tour of the park and the interior of the villa led by the owner Geraldina Piazza, who will accompany visitors on a discovery of the building's spaces, decorations and history. Admission to the event is free of charge, but requires a compulsory reservation via the www.italialiberty.it website or text message to 3200445798.

Art Nouveau Week, the launch of the 8th edition

This will be followed by the first official presentation of the programme of the eighth edition of Art Nouveau Week, the festival dedicated to Art Nouveau, scheduled from 8 to 14 July 2026. The theme chosen for the new edition will be the Sea, understood as a cultural, symbolic and landscape element, capable of connecting architecture, art and territory.

The curator and president of the festival, prof. Andrea Speziali, one of the leading experts on Art Nouveau in Italy, will illustrate the main novelties of the 2026 edition, including an exhibition-competition dedicated to decorative constructions in sand, a project that will bring Art Nouveau to the Italian coast through installations. Among the planned works aalso a reinterpretation of Villa Pottino made of sand on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, as a tribute to its architectural beauty, and the creation of reproductions of symbolic Art Nouveau buildings, reinterpreted by contemporary artists as temporary works of art, in an ideal dialogue with the decorative language of Klimt and the Italian coastal landscape.

The festival will involve numerous Sicilian cities, confirming the island's role as one of the main laboratories of Italian Art Nouveau. In Sicily, Art Nouveau Week will stop off with guided tours in Augusta, Agrigento, Avola, Caltagirone, Canicattì, Canicattini Bagni, Catania, Chiaramonte Gulfi, Favignana, Ispica, Licata, Messina, Mondello, Palermo, Sciacca, Siracusa, Taormina, Trapani and Vittoria, bringing more than one hundred modernist examples to the public's attention. Professor Veronica De Maria, one of the members of the scientific committee will also present the figure of the painter Bergler.

Creative installation on the site of Villa Deliella

During the event scheduled for 25 January in Palermo, the Italia Liberty association will also promote the idea of an artistic installation signed by its president to give new life to the ground where Villa Deliella once stood. According to the promoters of the initiative, the rebirth of the area where the villa once stood should take place thanks to an intervention capable of restoring memory, beauty and meaning to a wounded place, transforming it into a symbol of rebirth, like a phoenix rising from its own ashes without a reconstruction but a work that can be enjoyed by the public.

The project takes the form of a permanent art installation, which starts from the most authentic remaining sign: the original perimeter of the villa's walls, still legible flush with the ground. From this trace comes a large pool of water, a perimeter fountain that faithfully traces the layout of the building, making visible what is no longer there.

Inside the basin, a "core" structure made of durable materials - aluminium, steel, copper and wrought iron - reconstructs the perimeter of the villa in an evocative form, restoring the main volumes, the turret and the ground floor bay window. Not a mimetic reconstruction, but a design in space: light, transparent, capable of suggesting the original forms without denying absence. The result is a place that combines memory and contemporaneity: not a mute void, but a space that narrates, excites and invites reflection.