Description of the attraction
The Luigi Pirandello House Museum is located 4 km south of Agrigento, where the famous Italian writer and screenwriter was born in 1867. In the middle of a typically village landscape, on a hill that drops abruptly into the sea, stands a simple building from the late 17th century, surrounded by olive and oak groves. Ricci Gramittos, the ancestor of the writer's mother, bought the house in 1817, and here he and his family found refuge during the cholera epidemic in Sicily. In 1944, an explosion at a nearby American ammunition depot seriously damaged the structure.
After the death of Luigi Pirandello, his house was declared a national monument, and in 1952 the government of Sicily bought the building and turned it into a museum. Today, it contains handwritten and other materials related to the life of the writer - family portraits, photographs of the writer himself and Martha Abba, an actress with whom he was especially close in recent years, manuscripts, publications of his stories and theatrical plays. Periodically, the museum hosts temporary exhibitions dedicated to Pirandello. There is also a library named after the writer, which contains about 5 thousand different documents - letters, drafts of plays and personal belongings. The Pirandello apartments are located on the top floor and are also open to the public. In this room, watch a short documentary about the life and work of the writer.
The last time Luigi Pirandello was in this house was in 1934, two years before his death, but he did not stop here, but saw him only from afar.
It is imperative to walk along the shady alley that leads to the century-old pine tree, under which the famous Sicilian loved to sit. Here he wanted to be buried: now a simple stone sign, made by the sculptor Mazzakurati, marks the place where the urn with Pirandello's ashes is kept.
