Social Program
Frontiers International Conference on Wastewater Treatment and Modelling
21-24 May 2017 – Palermo, Italy
FICWTM – Social Program
Some details of social events at the FICWTM2017 can be found below – more details will be provided as they become available.
Sunday 21 May – Palazzo Chiaramonte – Steri
Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri is a historical palace in Palermo, Sicily. The building was begun in the early 14th century, and was the residence of the powerful Sicilian lord Manfredi III Chiaramonte. He commissioned the decoration of the Sala Magna (“Grand Hall”), with a painted wooden ceiling by Cecco di Naro, Simone da Corleone and Pellegrino Darena. From the late 15th century to 1517 it housed the Aragonese-Spanish viceroys of Sicily; later it was home to the Royal Customs and, from 1600 to 1782, the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition. The palace was restored in the 20th century, with numerous elements associated with its role as a jail of the Inquisition. During the works, the grooves left by iron cages in which had been hung the severed heads of the nobles who had rebelled against emperor Charles V were discovered in the façade. The palace is now a museum; among the artworks, it houses Renato Guttuso’s Vucciria.
18.00 – 21.00 Icebreaker
Monday 22 May – Villa Niscemi
The villa has been the main residence for at least three centuries of Valguarnera family of Niscemi. The house passed his childhood Fulco di Verdura, the famous artist and twentieth century jeweler, son of Caroline of Valguarnera. In 1987, the descendants of the family (even if by order of age, the last Valguarnera, to date, is the daughter of a first cousin Corrado, Maria Carolina Valguarnera), Margherita (called Maita) Valguarnera and Maria Immacolata (called Mimi) Valguarnera , Princess Romanov, sold the monument to the City of Palermo which has made its representative office. Inside, furniture, paintings, furnishings evoke the charm of a lost time, although the most important furnishings were taken away from the house before the sale. In the entrance hall on the main floor is the large stone fireplace in the second half of the 800 designed by the architect Giovan Battista Palazzotto. In the green room stands out the fresco depicting Charlemagne granted the coat of arms of Valguarnera.
18.30 – 23.00 Sicilian taste Social dinner
Tuesday 23 May – Villa Malfitano Whitaker
The project and the construction date back to the period between 1885 and 1889 by the architect Ignazio Greek commissioned by Joseph Whitaker, a descendant entrepreneur an English family, who settled in Palermo in the second half of the nineteenth century. The villa, in neo-Renaissance style, is on three levels; in the interior there are several beautifully decorated rooms where a rich collection of art objects is preserved collected by the owner during his many travels as furniture, paintings, coral, ivory, porcelain and Flemish tapestries of the sixteenth century that the Whitaker Foundation today preserves zealously . Also several paintings by Francesco Lojacono.
18.30 – 23.00 Gala dinner
Wednesday 24 May – Teatro Massimo
The opera house was designed and overseen by the Italian architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, who was well known in Sicily for his previous cathedral restoration design in the city of Acireale, as well as garden and villa designs in the city of Palermo and Caltagirone. The Teatro Massimo is the largest theatre in Italy (and the third largest opera house in Europe). Realized in the late-Renaissance style, the auditorium was planned for 3,000 people, but, in its current format, it seats 1,350, with 7 tiers of boxes rising up around an inclined stage, and shaped in the typical horseshoe style.
18.30 – 23.00 Italian Art & Culture Dinner
Wednesday 24 May – Pompeian hall
The Pompeian hall is a very special room of circular shape of Teatro Massimo. It was originally thought as a smoking room and exclusively reserved for the nobles. It is also called Echo Room for its perfect acoustics: the effect produced speaking inside it goes more and more increasing as you get closer to the center.
Program is subject to change.
