B&B MiraValle Agrigento is just a 10-minute drive from the birthplace of Luigi Pirandello (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934).
the birthplace of Luigi Pirandello is located in a rural district, perched above the sea, called “Caos”, on the border between the municipality of Agrigento (4 kilometres) and that of Porto Empedocle. It is reached by taking the SS 115 state road towards Villaseta.
The house was originally a late-eighteenth-century rural building, owned by the Ricci Gramitto family, the writer's maternal ancestors. Here, Caterina Ricci Gramitto, Luigi's mother, had taken refuge to escape the severe cholera epidemic that raged in Sicily in 1867. Having passed to other owners following the economic collapse of the Pirandello family, the building was damaged in 1943 by the explosion of a nearby munitions depot and was declared a national monument in 1949. After its acquisition by the Sicilian Region in 1952, restoration and arrangement works were undertaken that gave the place its current appearance.
The rooms on the upper floor, overlooking the surrounding countryside, house personal objects, photographs, honours, reviews, letters, manuscripts and first editions of books with autograph dedications, posters of the great Agrigento writer's most famous works, and the Greek vase used to transfer his ashes from the Verano cemetery to Agrigento. The ground floor periodically hosts temporary exhibitions dedicated to the Maestro. ⏎ Since 1987 the birthplace has formed a single institution with the Luigi Pirandello Library based in Agrigento.
"… may the cinerary urn be carried to Sicily and walled into some rough stone in the countryside of Girgenti where I was born".
A nearby path crosses the countryside and leads to the site of the famous Pirandello Pine, sadly no longer existing because it was severely damaged by the storm of 1997. Here, to fulfil the wish expressed by the writer in his last will, a stone monument reworked by the sculptor Marino Mazzacurati holds the urn with the ashes of Luigi Pirandello.
Source: The Valley of the Temples
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