Our home
We are inside Palazzo Biscari, an eighteenth-century historic palazzo in the heart of Catania.
Why here
We believe in what this city can become
We bring out its beauty and its resources, starting with the choice of our home: a noble residence rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693, the disaster that razed Catania and many other towns in eastern Sicily to the ground.
That trauma became a chance for rebirth, to which Catania owes its late Baroque appearance and splendour. Palazzo Biscari is the symbol of that ability to respond to a crisis: an example of architecture, engineering, art and creativity, and an act of love for, and generosity towards, a community.
Choosing this place is a statement of intent: an attitude towards the city’s artistic and cultural heritage, and the need to bring tradition and the contemporary into dialogue.
The palazzo
A private residence, and one of the first museums open to the public
The palazzo is part of the UNESCO site “Città tardo barocche del Val di Noto” (Late Baroque Towns of the Val di Noto). Rebuilt in the late Baroque style after the earthquake of 1693, it was completed by Ignazio Paternò Castello, 5th Prince of Biscari, archaeologist, scholar and patron, appointed Royal Custodian of the Antiquities of the Val Demone and the Val di Noto in 1779, who wanted to make his residence a place of culture open to the community.
There he created an archaeological museum, a destination for the greatest scholars of the eighteenth century, Goethe among them. Over the centuries the palazzo has been able to adapt and be reborn, becoming a crossroads and meeting place for travellers and scholars. It’s still owned and run by the Paternò Castello di Biscari family, and today its roughly 700 rooms house a range of uses: private residence, museum, fashion atelier.
In the eighteenth century, the spaces that now house Isola were reserved for the family and its administrators; over the following decades they changed use several times, until they came to us in 2021. Since then we have built a special bond with the family that owns it: we see the building as an integrated system, which we look after together to preserve it and bring out its value.
What changes
Bringing history and innovation into contact
Bringing new life and new uses into a heritage building means trying out new ways of living and working in exceptional settings. Beautiful, harmonious and coherent workspaces create the conditions that encourage attention, motivation and quality of thought. Turning a wing of Palazzo Biscari into a workplace was an important exercise in giving a historic building a new meaning.
Heritage
New life, new uses
A historic cultural landmark hosts work, training, culture and meetings, every day.
Work
Exceptional settings
We try out new ways of working in a place that was never meant for it.
The neighbourhood
A neighbourhood that matters
The palazzo is the starting point for building relationships with the Civita, with the people who live there and the people who work there.
The generations
Raising awareness
Anyone who comes here to work, study or attend an event discovers a heritage they didn’t know, and learns to see it as their own.
The Isola project
An infrastructure that respects the palazzo
About a thousand square metres restored across two wings, where work, training, culture and dialogue live side by side.
Creating Isola, and building an innovation hub inside an eighteenth-century palazzo, was a complex and fascinating design challenge. A project born from co-design, curated and coordinated by the Sicilian studio Analogique, grounded in the absolute respect the palazzo deserves, and involving specialist companies to design and install technical systems that are cutting-edge in every respect. Design, technology, innovation and functionality, but also history, tradition, the future and sustainability.
The project works through targeted interventions that bring hidden details back to light and reopen blocked circulation routes. Holding it all together is a light technical infrastructure, a new stratigraphic layer needed to adapt the spaces to their new function: a simple device that brings together lighting, air conditioning, power, video, audio, CCTV and alarm systems, and sets the informal positions of the furniture. These pieces sometimes stand alone, each with its own recognisable identity, and sometimes come together to create new configurations. New models of living, working and learning together are born this way every day, adapting to different uses and functions, even overlapping ones, in the same space.
Events in the historic wing
An event inside the Salone delle Feste
Isola and the palazzo are closely linked: when needed, the Salone delle Feste becomes a natural extension of Isola. We have organised events that also needed larger or more monumental spaces, working side by side with the owners to find the best solutions.
Tell us what you have in mind, and we’ll work out together how to make it happen.
- Capacity
- Up to 200 people
- Layouts
- Theatre, tables, long single table, stage, U-shape
- Suitable for
- Conventions, congresses, workshops, dinners, aperitivi, exhibitions, cultural events
The setting
Inside a UNESCO site
We are in the heart of Catania’s historic centre, within the boundaries of the UNESCO site “Città tardo barocche del Val di Noto”. Our neighbourhood is the Civita, one of the oldest parts of the city, where for centuries princes and fishermen lived side by side, enclosed by the sixteenth-century walls commissioned by Charles V. Palazzo Biscari rests on those walls, giving the city a unique façade overlooking the sea.
Living it
Make it yours
You can live in the palazzo every day, or just once, done properly. Two different ways of being somewhere that, either way, makes everything unique.
Working here
Six options, from a single day to an office for your team, with a business address if you need one.
CoworkingHosting your own event
Ten rooms and a terrace, from four to eighty people, with a team that helps you build it.
Event spaces