Palazzo Sclafani, opposite the cathedral, was built in 1330 by Count Matteo Sclafani in a Chiaramontese-Gothic style — three storeys of dressed limestone, double-arched windows in twos and threes, a battlemented cornice. It survives almost intact, one of the very few 14th-century secular palaces in Sicily still in original form.
For most of its history the palace served as a hospital — the city's first major medical institution. The Triumph of Death fresco that is now in Palazzo Abatellis was originally painted on the courtyard wall here in the 1440s. The building is currently a military command and not accessible inside; the exterior is easy to see from the cathedral piazza.