The Luigi Pirandello Theatre is a 500-metre walk from the Bed and Breakfast MiraValle Agrigento.
The Luigi Pirandello Theatre is a theatre in Agrigento, built in 1870 by the engineer Dionisio Sciascia and the architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile.
It is accessed through the atrium of Palazzo dei Giganti, seat of the Town Hall of Agrigento, a natural continuation of Piazza Pirandello. The two-level façade, in perfect neoclassical style, features three pairs of Ionic columns placed at the sides of three large windows, while the upper part has six medallion bas-reliefs depicting as many masters of the theatrical art. The first level has an arched portico with the city's coat of arms in the centre: the three giants supporting the three medieval towers of the hill. In the atrium are two marble plaques dedicated respectively to the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Agrigento playwright Luigi Pirandello, Nobel Prize winner for literature, and to the dedication of the theatre to the world-famous author. A third bronze plaque depicts in bas-relief Dante Alighieri, Father of the Italian language and author of the Divine Comedy, with Pirandello's pine tree behind him, symbolising a continuity between the two figures of Italian literature.
Inside, the theatre was decorated by some of the most renowned painters of the nineteenth century, including the Milanese Giuseppe Belloni, Luigi Sacco and Antonio Tavella, who painted the ceiling and the front of the boxes.
One of the theatre's most significant decorations was certainly the curtain, depicting the valiant Akragas athlete Exaenetus returning victorious from Elea, painted by the Messina artist Luigi Queriau. The work was lost or destroyed during the long period of closure. In 2007 the Agrigento producer Francesco Bellomo donated a new curtain, made with the techniques of the time, reproducing the original fresco.
In the foyer of the theatre are displayed the bust of Zeus, formerly placed in Villa Garibaldi, the bust dedicated to Louis Philippe, that of Luigi Pirandello and numerous plaques, including those recording the decision of the Agrigento senate to build the theatre and to name it after Queen Margherita. Other plaques recall the dedication of the foyer to the Agrigento actor Montalbano, the reopening of the theatre in the presence of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro and the return of the ancient curtain The Victory of Exaenetus.
Source: Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia
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