Description of the attraction
The Mandralisca Museum, located on the street of the same name in the city of Cefalu, bears the name of the local native of Baron Enrico Piraino di Mandralisca. He was born in 1809 into a wealthy family and all his life he collected amazing works of art that can be seen in the museum today. The baron was very fond of art, but at the same time he remained very attentive to the needs of ordinary residents of his native Cefalu. With his own money, he built a school for the children of peasants and fishermen. Baron Mandraliska donated all his collections to the city with the only condition - to establish a fund that would allow everyone to see the works of art collected over the years.
Today, this interdisciplinary museum, in addition to paintings, sculptures, coin collections and one of the richest in Europe small-scale collections, contains numerous archaeological finds from the Aeolian Islands, where the baron himself conducted excavations. It also displays pieces of furniture and valuables that belonged to the Mandralisk family. Part of the museum is occupied by the library, which contains over six thousand volumes of books, two priceless incunabula (first printed books of the 15th century) and rare editions. In the art gallery, among other things, you can see some works by artists of the Byzantine school, wonderful panoramas of Venice, as well as the famous "Portrait of an Unknown Man", which belongs to the brush of the greatest artist of Sicily, Antonello da Messina. The malocultural collection is represented by more than 20 thousand exhibits of shells collected around the world.
