Ernesto Basile - architect

Pioneer of Stile Liberty - the Italian twist on Art Nouveau

The rear facade of the Palazzo Monteciterio, which was
almost completely rebuilt by Ernesto Basile

The architect Ernesto Basile, who would become known for his imaginative fusion of ancient, medieval and modern architectural elements and as a pioneer of Art Nouveau in Italy, was born on this day in 1857 in Palermo.

His most impressive work was done in Rome, where he won a commission to rebuild almost completely the Palazzo Montecitorio, the home of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament.

Yet his most wide-ranging impact was in Sicily, where he followed in the footsteps of his father, Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, in experimenting with the Art Nouveau style.

Basile senior designed the Villa Favaloro, in Piazza Virgilio off Via Dante, and with Ernesto and others, notably Vincenzo Alagna, taking up the mantle, it was not long before entire districts of the city were dominated by Stile Liberty, the Italianate version of the Art Nouveau that took its name from the Liberty and Co store in London's Regent Street, which sold ornaments, fabric and objets d'art to a refined clientele and encouraged modern designers.

Ernesto Basile was a pioneer
of Art Nouveau style

Fine examples of Ernesto Basile’s architecture in Palermo include the Villino Florio (1899–1902) in Viale Regina Margherita, which is open to the public, the Hotel Villa Igiea (1899–1901) on the waterfront and the Casa Utveggio on Via XX Settembre.

He also completed the construction of the city’s great opera house, the Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, which had been started by his father in 1874 and was finally completed in 1897, its progress interrupted by an eight-year hiatus after a dispute over funding.  Allegations of fraud were levelled at Basile senior and he was to have been replaced with another architect until a public outcry forced his reinstatement. In the event he died soon after work restarted and the final six years were overseen by Ernesto.

Taught initially by his father, who was a professor at the University of Palermo, Ernesto graduated from the Royal School of Engineering and Architecture and soon afterwards moved to Rome.

His work on the Palazzo Montecitorio came about after he took part in a competition held by Francesco Crispi, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, to find an architect to supervise the reconstruction of the palace, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini with later input from Carlo Fontana, which had been seized by the new Italian government in 1870 but had fallen into serious disrepair.

Ernesto Basile's stylish Villino Florio is one of many
examples of Stile Liberty in the city of Palermo

Basile demolished the wings and rear of the palace so that Bernini’s facade was virtually all that remained, building a new structure dominated by four red-brick towers at the corners. Basile also added the Transatlantico, the long and impressive salon which surrounds the grand debating chamber, which is also Basile’s design.

The project, in which Basile fused the Roman classical and Baroque elements of the building with Art Nouveau, is seen as one of the most important milestones for early modernism in Italian architecture.

Basile’s other notable works in a prolific career include the building for the National Exhibition of Palermo in 1892, the Teatro Sociale in Canicattì in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, the Palazzo Bruno di Belmonte in Ispica in the province of Ragusa in the southeast of the island and the Palazzo San Giorgio in Reggio Calabria.

In 1890 he succeeded his father as a professor of architecture at the University of Palermo. He died in the city in August 1932.

The extravagant Liberty-style Antico Stabilimento Balneare
di Mondello is a reminder of the resort's golden age

Travel tip:

Two particular areas of Palermo and the surroundings are dominated by Stile Liberty buildings. One is Via Libertà and the streets running off it between Politeama and the Giardino Inglese; another is Mondello, the seaside town just outside the city created from an area of former marshland, where the promenade retains many Art Nouveau villas built for the well-to-do of Palermo around the turn of the century, some designed by Ernesto Basile. Right in the water itself, built on stilts with a bridge linking it to the promenade, is the extraordinary Antico Stabilimento Balneare di Mondello, the extravagant Stile Liberty bathing platform built by Rudolf Stualker.

Hotels in Mondello from TripAdvisor.co.uk

Ernesto Basile's father designed Palermo's impressive Teatro
Massimo before his son completed the project

Travel tip:

The Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna. It was originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, although today there is a limit of 1,350.  There are also seven tiers of boxes. Enrico Caruso sang in a performance of La Gioconda during the opening season, returning to perform in Rigoletto at the end of his career. The theatre was closed for renovation for more than 20 years but reopened in 1997. The final scenes of the third part of The Godfather Trilogy, based in Puzo's novel, were filmed there.



More reading:

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Italy's last universal genius

Ulisse Stacchini, the architect behind two major Milan landmarks

The groundbreaking designs of Paolo Soleri

Also on this day:

1788: The death in Rome of British royal pretender Charles Edward Stuart

1888: The death of Saint Don Bosco

1933: The birth of Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano

(Picture credits: Palazzo Monteciterio by Mac9; Villino Florio by GiuseppeT; Mondello Balneare by Berthold_Werner; Teatro Massimo by Bjs; all via Creative Commons)


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Tommaso Buscetta - Mafia ‘pentito’

Sicilian gangster’s testimony put hundreds behind bars

Buscetta's testimony led to hundreds
of Mafia-related arrests

The Sicilian mobster Tommaso Buscetta, who was the first major Mafia figure to break the code of omertà and pass details of organised criminal activity to the authorities, was born on this day in 1928 in Palermo.

His evidence to the celebrated anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone paved the way for the so-called Maxi Trial, a process lasting six years that led to the conviction and jailing of 350 mafiosi.

Buscetta’s testimony in the Pizza Connection Trial in New York State at around the same time in the mid-1980s led to the conviction of several hundred more mobsters both in Italy and the United States, including the powerful Sicilian Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti.

Arguably the most shocking information he passed on to the authorities concerned Italy’s three-times former prime minister, the late Giulio Andreotti, whose links with the Cosa Nostra he exposed shortly after Falcone was murdered in May 1992, killed by a massive bomb placed under the motorway linking Palermo with the city’s international airport.

Buscetta arriving at the court in
Palermo during the Maxi Trial

Andreotti was found guilty of complicity in the Mafia assassination of a journalist and sentenced to 24 years in jail, although he never went to prison and was acquitted after a number of appeals. His links with the Mafia were considered proven, although by the time that verdict was reached too much time had elapsed under Italian law and the judgment was cancelled.

The route to Buscetta becoming the Mafia’s first ‘pentito’ began in Palermo, where he was the youngest of 17 children fathered by a poorly-paid worker in a glass factory.

He followed the usual route out of poverty by becoming involved with crime. He was only 17 when he joined the mob in 1945. In the years that followed he became a fully-fledged member of the Porta Nuova Family, mainly working in cigarette smuggling.

Buscetta was part of the
Mafia from a young age

In 1963 Buscetta fled to the United States, shortly after the Ciaculli Massacre, which was part of an internal Mafia conflict known as the First Mafia War. His connections enabled him to join the Gambino crime family in New York, who gave him a front of legitimacy in a pizza business. In 1968, he was convicted in his absence of double murder by an Italian court.

Two years later he was arrested by police in New York who were aware of his conviction but released after Italian authorities failed to request his extradition.  After his later arrest in Brazil, however, he was returned to Italy and began his life sentence.

Eight years later, on day release from prison, he escaped and went back to Brazil, desperate to escape the so-called Second Mafia War, fearing for his life after several of his allies and family members had been eliminated by the ruthless boss, Toto Riina, including his close associate and friend, Stefano Bontade. It was Riina who arranged the murder of Falcone, as well as that of his fellow magistrate, Paolo Borsellino.

When Buscetta was arrested and sent back to Italy again he was so fearful of Riina that he attempted to kill himself in prison before deciding he would seek revenge on Riina by other means. He asked to talk to Falcone, and began his life as an informant - a ‘pentito’.

The judge Giovanni Falcone, to whom
Buscetta disclosed his secrets

The irony was that Buscetta was never more than a footsoldier in the Mafia hierarchy, yet always seemed to have a glamorous girlfriend and dressed as if he was wealthy. He became well connected both in Sicily and the United States.

He was therefore able to provide information about the structure, the recruitment techniques and the functions of the Cosa Nostra, providing the authorities with an understanding of the Mafia phenomenon about which they could previously only speculate.

He was the first to reveal the existence and the inner workings of the Cupola - the Mafia commission that governed the organisation and ordered the elimination of its erring members.

Buscetta’s reward was to be given special police protection, a generous income and a new identity in the United States, where he died in 2000 at the age of 71.

There are now several hundred Mafia turncoats helping Italian justice to fight organised crime.

Palermo's imposing monumental
arch at Porta Nuova

Travel tip:

One might imagine that an area that lends its name to a Mafia family to be poor and down at heel but the Porta Nuova is anything but. A giant monumental arch built in the 15th century and rebuilt in the 16th century, it opens into what was the Cassaro, the city’s most ancient street, which runs from the Norman Palace next to the Villa Bonanno park in a straight course right down to the harbour. The street has been renamed Via Vittorio Emanuele but many local people still refer to it as Cassaro.

The magnificent Teatro Massimo is seen as a symbol of
Palermo's rebellion against the grip of the Mafia

Travel tip:

Palermo’s Renaissance-style Teatro Massimo, opened in 1897, has become a symbol of the city’s fight back against the grip of the Mafia. The largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe after the Opéra National de Paris and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna, originally designed with an auditorium for 3,000 people, it was closed for supposedly minor refurbishments in 1974. But at a time when local government was at its most corrupt and when the Mafia controlled almost everything in the city there was little money in the public purse and the theatre, which once attracted all the great stars from the opera world, would remain dark for 23 years. However, after the Falcone murder, the city turned against the mob as never before and the reopening in 1997, with a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the esteemed maestro Claudio Abbado, was seen as a motif for Palermo’s rebirth. 

More reading:

The anti-Mafia crusade of Giovanni Falcone

Stefano Bontade - Mafia boss with close ties to ex-PM Giulio Andreotti

How Carlo Gambino became one of the world's most powerful crime bosses

Also on this day:

1478: The birth of Giulio d'Este di Ferrara, nobleman who spent half his life in jail

1814: The founding of the Carabinieri military police force

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