The bishop’s palace of Lipari

In the early centuries of Christianity, starting from the time of Bishop St. Agatho (3rd century AD), the bishops of Lipari had their residence in the area around the present small church of St. Bartholomew where the first place of worship of the island’s primitive Christian community had arisen.

The Cathedral, with its episcopal residence, was moved to the heart of the upper town, the ancient Greek and Roman acropolis, when Christianity definitively imposed itself on the other cults practiced on the Island, probably on the site of some pagan temple and in a certainly safer and more defensible position.

After the period of Arab domination, to re-found a church dedicated to St. Bartholomew in the heart of the acropolis with an adjoining monastery was, between 1072 and 1081, the Norman Count Roger, who entrusted the work to a Benedictine community led by Abbot Ambrose.

When Lipari again became an episcopal see, in the 12th century, the monastery’s rooms were used as a residence by the bishops appointed to the see of Lipari. And when, in the 13th century, the municipality began to be structured, it was practically born in the shadow of the bishopric.

After the terrible sack by the pirate Ariadeno Barbarossa (1544), during which the town was largely destroyed and the population significantly decimated and deported, the Cathedral-also looted and set on fire-was restored as early as the late 1500s; the bishop’s house was also rebuilt and a large and still existing vineyard was recovered in the last century, which stood across the creek (present-day Corso Vittorio Emanuele) in the wide flat area at the foot of the acropolis, the ‘contrada di Diana,’ then sparsely inhabited because it was poorly defensible against pirate attacks.

A second bishop’s house would be built here shortly afterwards, which in time would become the current residence. In fact, in 1605 the bishop’s palace next to the cathedral turned out to be in such poor condition that a new dwelling was needed: a sober building of two rooms on the ground floor with two or three rooms above equipped with a beam and pergola, inside the vineyard. It was the first nucleus of what was to be the new and final bishop’s palace.

It was accessed by a lane connecting the casalino with the creek. In 1618 a new bishop decided to house it by making significant improvements, while a further extension of the new bishop’s palace was made in 1725.

The final move to the suburban episcope was perhaps also encouraged by the fact that large numbers of people were beginning to leave the walled city to settle in the village below the Rocca, including families belonging to the bourgeoisie. Defended by the castle’s artillery, the plain of Lipari indeed now seemed safe from pirate raids.

The building in the vineyard took on its present appearance with the work commissioned by Bishop Bonaventura Attanasio between 1845 and 1856, tiling all the rooms in majolica, and by affixing his own coat of arms in the central room on the first floor (Room 5 of the Museum) and on the entrance arch of the small private chapel, on the floor of which – also made of Sicilian majolica – was inscribed the date of 1846 and inside of which was housed a wooden altar, replaced in the early 1900s by a marble one.

Around 1870, therefore, the palace was equipped with additional rooms and elevations: that of the entire second floor, the attic, the two large halls on the second floor to the west and noon, and also the three-flight stone staircase connecting the floors.

Between 1913 and 1928 the palace in the acropolis remained almost uninhabited and deteriorated.

It was Msgr. Bernardino Salvatore Re, a Capuchin originally from Palermo, who in 1928, as soon as he arrived in Lipari as bishop, put in place a general restoration of the building, which was completed in 1931, as the plaque at the entrance facing the castle reads. So the ancient episcope was never completely abandoned and is currently used as a section of the Aeolian Archaeological Museum.

In the 1960s much of the palace’s vineyard was put up for sale, meeting the municipal administration’s desire to lay out new roads and acquire land for urban expansion. Part of it was instead expropriated as a result of major archaeological discoveries.