Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele

Few opera houses announce themselves as loudly as the Teatro Massimo. Set on Piazza Verdi in the heart of Palermo, it rises above a broad flight of steps as a Corinthian temple front with six columns, crowned by a hemispherical dome almost 29 metres across. When it opened in 1897 its footprint of more than 7,700 square metres made it the third-largest opera house in Europe, behind only the Palais Garnier in Paris and the court opera in Vienna, and it remains the largest opera building in Italy. Its full name honours King Victor Emanuel II.

The project grew out of the years after Italian unification, when Palermo wanted a theatre that matched its standing as the second city of the south. The council launched an international competition in 1864, and the commission went to Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, who drew on the Greek temples of Selinunte and Agrigento for a monumental neoclassical exterior. Work began in 1874, stalled for most of the 1880s, and after Basile's death in 1891 his son Ernesto, later one of the leading names of Italian Art Nouveau, completed the building and shaped its auditorium. The stonework was carried out by the firm of Giovanni Rutelli and Alberto Machì; the bronze lions flanking the steps, allegories of Tragedy and Lyric poetry, are by Benedetto Civiletti and Mario Rutelli. The house finally opened on 16 May 1897 with Verdi's Falstaff.

Inside, the horseshoe-shaped hall rises through tiers of boxes to a gallery, with painted decoration by Rocco Lentini, Ettore De Maria Bergler, Michele Cortegiani and Luigi Di Giovanni and furnishings in the Liberty taste. The ceiling over the stalls is made of painted wooden panels, the so-called petals, that can be raised to ventilate the hall naturally. Above the portico runs an inscription declaring that art renews peoples and reveals their life. Film-goers know the steps and auditorium from the closing scenes of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III (1990), shot during a performance of Cavalleria rusticana.

Palermo itself, the capital of Sicily, began as a Phoenician harbour settlement in the 8th century BC and was later ruled by Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, each leaving buildings behind. The Teatro Massimo marks its last great age of civic ambition, at the end of the 19th century.

Getting there

The theatre stands in central Palermo, about 0.7 km from the city centre. The nearest airport is Falcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO), about 24 km away along the coast to the west.