Study Room
- After being a lounge in the eighteenth century it became a bedroom, than a lounge and finally a study room in the mid-nineteenth century.
The grotesque paintings of the vault were performed by an unknown painter of the eighteenth century, probably the same who made the lounge’s central part painting, with the subsequent intervention of Lodovico Gamberucci. In the center of the ceiling there is a dark red circle with a fake white relief representing the Three Graces, the connecting bands between the wall and the ceiling have floral details and in the perimeter bend there are depictions of birds.
In this room you can see a Marble Statue of Cherubino Dello Sbarba, an empire-style commode with mirror, an ancient desk, a cardinal chair, and a collection of rocks and minerals, and scientific equipment belonging to the German geologist dr. Heinrich Foestner, who gave the name to a volcanic ephemeral island in the Sicilian canal, near the most famous Ferdinandea island..The study is available only for events.
- In the second half of the eighteenth century, the landlady Ricciarelli Girolama, Ottaviano Primo’s widow had a winter apartment and a summer room. The winter apartment was on the second floor of the Contugi building, overlooking the main street. As summer room, following the costumes and necessities of the time, a wider and cool environment was chosen.
As well as the lined yellow bed, there were paintings depicting the Madonna, the Saints, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Cain, all with black and mecca threaded frames.
In the 1855 the room was used as a study room, called the gothic study, furnished with carved and golden walnut furniture decorated with Japanese paper; archival furniture with twenty-seven boxes, pallet stand, a large closet, a lectern. In the twentieth century, became the study of Arnaldo Dello Sbarba, deputy and then Minister of Labor and Social Security in the two Facta Governments in 1922, Undersecretary of Justice in the Governments of Giovanni Giolitti and Francesco Nitti.
The chandelier, originally a lamp belonging to a Venetian galleon, that’s what remains of the furnishings of that time.
The room once overlooked the courtyard of the palace. After 1884, built the stairs, a parapet was built to take water from the well of the courtyard. The well became a storage tank for water and the yard was closed with floor and glass ceiling; date back to the time the high doors with monogram DS. Until 1974 a door next to the glass window connected the study to a small room linked to two other rooms: the red lounge and a room today called the fireplace room.