Galleria Regionale di Sicilia (Palazzo Abatellis)

The Galleria Regionale, in the 15th-century Catalan Gothic Palazzo Abatellis in the Kalsa, is Sicily's best art museum. The collection covers Sicilian and southern Italian painting and sculpture from the 12th to the 17th century — strong on the indigenous Sicilian school but with major works by visitors and incomers like Antonello da Messina.

The Triumph of Death dominates the upper floor and is worth as much time as you can give it; the iconography is unusual and the painting is far better than reproductions suggest. Antonello's Virgin Annunciate is in a small dedicated room nearby. Closed Mondays.

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A story
The gallery's most famous holding is the anonymous 15th-century fresco Trionfo della Morte — a vast Triumph of Death originally painted on a courtyard wall of Palazzo Sclafani. The fresco was sawn off in four sections in 1944 to save it from the war and brought to Palazzo Abatellis. Antonello da Messina's Virgin Annunciate, also here, is one of the most quietly arresting portraits of the Italian 15th century.

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