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Palazzo Vermexio o del Senato

The seventeenth-century Palazzo Vermexio known also as Palazzo del Senato, hosts the city governement. It has a face with double orders; the Renaissance lower, the Baroque top

The Palazzo Vermexio also called Palazzo del Senato (1629 – 1633) was commissioned by the city government to the architect John Vermexio to replace the ancient headquarters of the Chamber Reginale of Siracusa.
The building become the city government palace and it is this still.

Palazzo Vermexio is, maybe, the maximum expression of the geometrism that animates every realization of the 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 Siracusa “scuppiuni“) or lizard: epithet given to the architect because of his uncommon height and thinness. The Palazzo 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.

The Palace's undergrounds, instead, still have the remains of a primordial Temple in ionic style.

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Piazza Duomo, 4
96100 - Syracuse (SR)

Telephone: 0931 451111