The large and bright Piazza Università is dominated by the formal mass of the university building. This prestigious institution was founded in 1434 on an initiative from Alphonse the Magnanimous and for a long time was the only university in Sicily.
It was in the eighteenth century, however, that it grew in prestige and exercised a cultural influence on the city
and its life.
Its importance is underlined by the fact that the main building was located in a piazza planned and built at the very
beginning of the main road, at that time Via Uzeda (today’s Via Etnea) which began at the ornamental gate of the same name.
The history of the current building begins in 1696, three years following the earthquake that destroyed Catania, when
reconstruction work began on the foundations of the ancient building. This initial work resulted in the premises where the
Rector currently has his office together with some administrative offices.
The courtyard surrounded by a most elegant two-storey portico was designed by Vaccarini (1730). The main façade was redesigned by the architect Mario Di Stefano following the damage caused by the 1818 earthquake. The Catanese artist Giovan Battista Piparo painted frescoes on the first floor and the vault of the rich Aula Magna, the walls of which are fully dressed in damask. Work on the new university premises was completed towards the end of the eighteenth century when all the institutes and the scientific laboratories necessary for the degree courses were ready.
A Close Relationship with the City
Today the eighteenth-century building in Piazza Università houses only the rectorate, offices and the Regional University
Library – the various faculties and departments have found premises in other prestigious buildings. Indeed, the university
currently has an ambitious plan of reuse of property in the centre of Catania.
In the 1960s the eighteenth-century Villa Cerami was renovated, today home to the Law Faculty. In the 1970s the Faculty of
Letters and Philosophy initiated the programme of recovery for the vast Benedictine monastery complex of San Nicolò l’Arena.
Palazzo Sangiuliano, again in Piazza Università – in front of the main building, houses some institutes of the Faculty of
Letters and Philosophy.
Apart from its prestigious buildings, the University of Catania has many museums of great historic, artistic and scientific
value. Each faculty ha valuable library collections, the most important of which belongs to the Faculty of Law and includes
many old and rare texts regarding legal history, some of which are incunables and sixteenth-century books.
The future Museo dei Benedettini will contain the documentation regarding the monastery. The ceramic archive containing over
10,000 record cards of ancient Greek vases will be improved and rendered available.
Above the city’s northern ring-road, on a site of some 70 hectares, the extremely large Città universitaria has risen,
including the university hospital. Pharmacy, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Astrophysics with the solar
observatory, the students’ centre and sports facilities are all housed on this campus.
Bibliography
S. Boscarino, Sicilia Barocca. Architettura e città, 1610-1760, Roma 1981.
G. Dato, La città di Catania. Forma e struttura, 1693-1833, Roma 1983.
AA.VV., Enciclopedia di Catania, Catania 1987.
Guida di Catania e provincia, a c. di N. Recupero, Catania 1991.
copyright Giuseppe Maimone Publisher