Palace Vermexio or of Senate

Culture, Monuments
Piazza Duomo - 96100 Siracusa

    The palace Vermexio also called Palace of the Senate (1629 – 1633) was commissioned by the city government to the architect John Vermexio to replace the ancient headquarters of the Chamber Reginale of Syracuse.

    The building then became the government building of the city until today, home to the offices of the Mayor and of the Town Hall. This building can be considered the highest expression of geometrics, typical of all the projects of John Vermexio. It was originally a perfect cube, split lengthwise in half by a long balcony that separates, even stylistically, the two orders: the Renaissance lower one from the Baroque top. The first floor has classical patterns: large gabled windows, rusticated Doric Tuscan pilasters, solemn entablature decorated with triglyphs and metopes. Baroque’s hints are also evident: from the window’s masks to the window’s shelves, all different one from the other. The balcony opens the Baroque style upper floor. Here the Ionic pilasters with windows alternating with niches designed to contain statues of the Spanish royal family never completed by Gregorio Tedeschi who was in charge of the sculptural decoration of the palace; he managed to complete only the imperial eagle biceps.

    It closes the building an expansive decoration with festoons going from the capitals to the ledge. In it Vermexio, who wanted to sign it, on the left corner sculptured a tiny gecko (said in Syracuse “scuppiuni“) or lizard: epithet given to the architect because of his uncommon height and thinness. The Palace Vermexio’ lizard is the “signature” of the architect. Inside the atrium is parked the eighteenth century (1763) Carrozza of the Senate, made on the Austrian model. In 1870 the balance of proportions wanted by Vermexio was altered with the construction of a penthouse, designed to house the premises of the technical department. The latest and most serious violence the palace has suffered around the 60s is that it was merged with a new building to expand the offices of City Hall; doing so the original project has been distorted by demolishing the old church of St. Sebastian and the headquarters of the Archdiocese Library, founded in 1780 by Bishop Alagona.

    In the basement of the building there are the remains of a primitive temple in Ionic style. The base measures 59 x 25m. The Ionic temple, whose dedication remains unknown, was probably a Athenaion, the second in order of time, like the one that is in the nearby; it is a rare example of those preserved in the West and dates to the mid of the sixth century. There are fragments of a huge capital and the lower part of a column, which has the characteristic to be covered, up to a certain height, by a not fluted band, in which there should have been bas-reliefs as those of certain large temples in Asia. According to research by Luigi Bernabo Brea, the temple was never completed. This is due to the expulsion of Gamoroi from Syracuse around 500 BC., as well as to the defeat of Syracuse by Hippocrates from Gela. Then Gelone abandoned the project of the Ionic temple preferring to start working on the building of the Doric Athenaion.