VINCENZO BELLINI MUSEUM

"Sunday morning, to accompany my friend Mario Soldati passing through Catania, I returned to visit the house where Vincenzo Bellini was born. [...] After a few steep steps, through a small door recessed in a thick wall, we entered the first small room that, despite having been transformed into a Bellini museum for many years, still retains that intimate air of a private home; it seems to enter one of those apartments of old Catania still inhabited by small clerks. In the calm, melancholy light coming from the balconies overlooking Via Vittorio Emanuele, heirlooms are carefully arranged in the small rooms. Here is the alcove where Vincenzo was born. Now there is his harpsichord filling almost all of it. It has the keyboard covered as if Bellini had played there just now. The small personal objects that belonged to the young maestro preserved behind the glass of a case, in this light of a Catania home, are still full of intimacy."
Thus Ercole Patti in his Diario Siciliano (1971) described the familiar and somewhat decadent atmosphere that hovers inside Vincenzo Bellini's house-museum.

The museum is housed in the house where the Catanian musician was born, which is located inside the 18th-century Gravina-Cruyllaspalace in Piazza S. Francesco; the years the musician spent in the house were about sixteen. Visiting the rooms is possible only if you are guided, this also because the arrangement of objects and manuscripts is not easy to decipher. A small music library, attached to the museum, contains material useful for research and specific studies on Vincenzo Bellini .

The museum was opened in May 1930. The rooms are organized so that the sequence of biographical events and the evolution of the master's work can be understood. The visit begins in Room A, which preserves the original floor from the artist's time. On the walls are displayed documents pertaining to Bellini's childhood and photographic records of ancient Catania. The room holds the lectern with the album on which King Victor Emmanuel affixed his signature. A small sculpture of Bellini by sculptor Salvatore Grimaldi is also preserved. The alcove is the room where, according to the accounts of the artist's descendants, the musician was born .

Theentire space is occupied by cousin Vincenzo's harpsichord, which was played by the artist during a later stay in Catania. A fine youthful portrait of Bellini stands out on the back wall. valuable libraries, the most important one belongs to the Faculty of Law, which boasts the possession of very old texts on the history of law including incunabula and cinquecentine.

In the future Benedictine Museum, documentation concerning the building will be displayed and the ceramic archive containing more than 10,000 cards of ancient Greek vaseswill be enhanced. Upstream of the Northern Ring Road, on an area of about seventy hectares, the very large University City has sprung up, which also includes the University Polyclinic. In the University City (one of the most modern in Italy) are the seats of Pharmacy, Engineering, the Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, the Institute of Astrophysics with the Solar Observatory, the Student Center and sports facilities.