Recognisable at first sight for its imposing staircase flanked by two bronze lions bearing the figures of Tragedy and Opera, the Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele rises in the heart of Palermo as the largest opera house in Italy and one of the grandest in Europe. Conceived to give the city a stage worthy of the great European capitals, it was designed by architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile and completed by his son Ernesto, becoming one of the most powerful manifestos of Sicilian neoclassical eclecticism.<\/p>\n
Construction began in 1875 and stretched over more than two decades: the curtain rose for the first time on 16 May 1897 with Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff<\/em>, an evening that marked Palermo’s entry among the great capitals of European opera. The neoclassical fa\u00e7ade echoes the forms of Greek and Sicilian temples \u2013 a tribute to the island’s cultural roots \u2013 and leads into a sumptuous interior dominated by red velvet, golden decorations and the ingenious ceiling “wheel” which, opening like a corolla, originally provided natural ventilation to the hall.<\/p>\n