Palazzo Asmundo

The palace occupies a prominent corner site on via Vittorio Emanuele at Via Pietro Novelli, with its principal façade facing the piazza and garden on the south side of Palermo Cathedral. The street once known as the strada del Cassaro is the same axis on which the building sits; the main entrance appears from Via Pietro Novelli. The structure presents as a late‑Baroque urban residence organized around reception rooms on the noble floor, with surviving fixed furnishings and decorative schemes concentrated on that principal level.

Interior decoration survives extensively. Large mural cycles in the main saloons were executed by Gioacchino Martorana; one fresco carries the date 1764 and the artist’s signature. Stuccowork throughout the principal rooms was produced by followers of Giacomo Serpotta, preserving the plaster relief decoration associated with Sicilian Baroque interiors. The combination of painted ceilings and modeled stucco provides the palace’s dominant visual character and remains largely in place.

Several named rooms preserve explicit iconography. The entrance salone, called the Salone Concerti, displays a painted programme that exalts virtues connected with justice, showing figures such as Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, Truth and Meekness with their traditional attributes. A room known as the Sala Allegoria presents an allegory of a mythic golden age, with motifs such as a palm, a mirror and bees that the sources connect to Marian and Christological meanings. Another principal salon bears a cosmological fresco showing Mercury, the Earth with the Moon, Mars and Venus arranged beneath a central Sun identified with Christ; this work is dated and signed 1764. The Salone Cattedrale contains a dominant composition with a central divine figure surrounded by figures evoking sanctity, immortality and abundance, and includes symbols described as a triangular alchemical sign, butterflies and a cornucopia, elements characteristically linked in the record to a cryptic‑mercurial Masonic repertoire.

Smaller fixtures and ornaments survive in situ. An eighteenth‑century alcove on the first floor is decorated with playful putti, vine tendrils and pairs of turtledoves. Two commemorative plaques mark historical events associated with the house: one records that Maria Cristina was received there, and another notes the births of Anna and Giuseppina Turrisi Colonna in 1821 and 1822. The interior maintains original fresco and stucco decoration together with preserved movable and fixed furnishings assembled in the twentieth century.

The palace also contains a varied material collection assembled on the noble floor. Holdings include marriage chests dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, examples of Sicilian ceramics, Neapolitan and French porcelain, embroidered textiles and lace, a historical arms group comprising polearms, blunt weapons, small artillery pieces, a range of firearms and accoutrements, postcards, maps and charts of Sicily, and a numismatic collection. The main façade at street level is fronted by a row of commercial displays and souvenir outlets, while the upper floors retain the historic decorative and movable ensemble.