Party Hall

Dear visitor, welcome to the Carini Castle Hall.

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The ballroom on the noble floor is a classic example of a fifteenth-century environment. This is a hall fourteen meters long, eight meters wide and six meters high, a unique example of the Spanish fifteenth century. The floor was covered with Valenza tiles, which were destroyed due to the degradation that the Castle suffered following its abandonment by the La Grua Talamanca family around 1812.

The walls that should have been decorated with paintings and enriched with paintings now appear whitewashed.

The vault is entirely an embroidery: divided by two architraves made up of as many rows of cusps, formed by carved pendulous elements. It has a coffered wooden ceiling.

In terms of decoration we are not able to appreciate the pictorial aspects of the ceiling as time has erased the compositional scheme. The few remaining ornamental motifs appear spread on a thin layer of white stucco.

The ceiling retains an original part and is characterized by a ceilingchest of drawers with elements stalactites all decorated with noble coats of arms of the most noble families of the time or close to the Casa La Grua Talamanca, and psalms dedicated to the Madonna and allegorical captions, among which the Latin writing "In medio consistit virtus" is visible on the central axis or In the middle lies the virtue, the writing, executed with Gothic characters recurring along the longitudinal beam and contained in the opposite faces of the archivolts of the cusps, indicates that it was created only for decoration. The structure of the entire coffered ceiling releases its strength on the lateral shelves on which the Latin phrase "Et in extremis labora" is engraved, meaning it is the extremes that work.

The wooden ceiling was created in conjunction with the modernization works carried out when the La Grua Talamanca family became related to the Assistamicristo family. A similar example is in fact preserved in the Palermo palace of the same family, a masterpiece of architecture.Gothic-Catalan in Sicily.

 

The space is embellished with a chimney embellished with the la Grua coat of arms framed by the large windows with a rich sixteenth-century portal, located on the sides of the fireplace, allow you to overlook the Castle courtyard;

From the side doors located to the right of the main entrance to the ballroom, you enter the room dear to the Baroness of Carini, where, it is said, her alleged meetings with Ludovico Vernagallo took place.

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I invite you now to continue towards the guesthouse rooms.