t has a sweet name as that of a muse: Zelantea. It calls this way the library and picture-gallery, temple and custodian, at the same time, of the culture and of the memories acesi.

The cultural and historical institution of the city of greater I detach, one of the most important of Sicily, a jewel point of reference for researchers, humanists and simple researchers. The monumental and characteristic building that entertains her/it rises at the street Marquis of Sangiuliano.

You/he/she was built in the first twenty years of the century on project of the engineer Michele Panebianco, one of the greatest of the epoch.
The foundation of the library, however, is more remote a great deal. It goes up again to 1716, on initiative of the academy of the Zealots, the most ancient of the Sicilian academies. Today one are considered of the richest libraries in the South of Italy.

It boasts, in fact, a patrimony more of 250.000 volumes, without counting the manuscripts, the brochures and the deriving magazines to a large extent from the legacies of noble families acesi.

The first nucleus of the picture-gallery was formed in 1851 instead. The occasion and the push it furnished her/it the noble Paul Leonardo Pennisi, giving a consistent harvest of signs, pictures and sculptures to the academy.
The example of the Pennisi was followed later a few times by Paul Leonardi I am In force, which left some of its more meaningful works.

It was the beginning of a tradition observed subsequently by all the artists acesi: to give proper works to the picture-gallery, all worthy of particular attention and of great value. You came to constitute so a beautiful collection that represents an enviable historical and artistic document of Acireale today, reported to the long time period understood among the second halves the ´600 and the first halves the ´900.

In the picture-gallery they are picked cloths of painters that have gone for the most greater, what Giacinto Platania - from many considered the father of the culture acese - Matteo Ragonis, Pietro Paolo Vast, Emanuele Grasso, Anthony Bonaccorso, Paul Leonardi, Saru Spina, Francis Mancini. You/they can also be admired pictures of Vito Di Ann and of Joseph Sciuti - other local painters of I detach - and of not less important artists what Gandolfo, Giacquinto, Maccari, Priests, Tuccari and Velasquez. Among you appreciate her picked up a mention apart they deserve the sketches and the incisions performed by Durer, Jordan, Marrotta, Morelli, Backs, Rosa, Head and Van Dyck. The picture-gallery also entertains in its rooms a lot of sculptures. The most notable are the group in chalk that represents the pastorello Aci and the nymph Galatea, realized by Rosary Anastasi for the 1846 Palermo exposure; Garibaldi´s Head, a bust of the hero of the two worlds, Michael´s La work Spina and destined to be situated, according to the artist, on the rock-cliff of Quarter to Marsala and finally a marmoreal bust of Giulio Cesare, open to Capomulini in 1676 during some archaeological excavations. A great deal admired three historical heirlooms: a gun in bronze of the ´600, a sedan for the viatico of the ´700 and the eighteenth-century and monumental one "Carriage of the Senate", realized by Alexander Vasta, an elegant derision of frill in carved wood and decorated in gold.