Ernesto Basile e le Esposizioni Agricole Siciliane dei primi anni del ‘900

Abstract

In 1891 the IV Italian National Exposition was held in Palermo, the first to have a southern city as its protagonist. The area on which the pavilions were built, obtained from the expropriation of the land belonging to the Prince of Villafranca, lent itself from the following year to accommodate the housing development and new buildings to complete the Via della Libertà, a high-bourgeois boulevard that already in 1850, by cutting the same "Firriato" of the Villafranca family, had marked the expansion towards the north of the city and seen the construction of the first buildings on its eastern front. Ernesto Basile was one of the main designers of the event and future urban creations. Although in a lower tone than this, the following years saw a multiplication of other similar events, often linked to projects for future subdivision and urbanization of the areas chosen for their realization. In the contribution that we propose we are interested in the “Esposizione Agricola Siciliana” (1902), reassembling the plan and the elevations thanks to the reading of the few iconographic documents received (photos, postcards) in relation to Basile's project sketches. The result offers new points of investigation for the identification of the places concerned and the possible permanence of some pavilions subsequently incorporated in other architectures.