Palazzo Biscari is the largest and most lavish private palace in Catania, built in the early eighteenth century by the Paternò Castello family on the old city walls overlooking the sea. The unassuming facade hides one of the finest noble interiors in Sicily, much of it still in private family hands.
The palace can be visited only on guided tour, run by the family itself; bookings are by phone or website and worth the effort. The route covers the ballroom, the museum room (formerly the family's private collection of antiquities), and the open loggia overlooking the port. About an hour, in Italian or basic English.