A rediscovered sign of the medieval identity in the ancient town of Palermo: a tower house in the Kalsa and its historical stratifications

A building supposedly belonged to the House of Chiaramonte (or Chiaromonte) in Sicily reached us incorporating into a larger building in the Kalsa district, which is of Islamic foundation, in Palermo. The sudden detachment of the plaster and some stone elements from its façades at the beginning of the 80s of the 20th century (and the subsequent removal of the unsafe parts) made it possible to identify the clear traces of a fourteenth-century towered house, characterized by a series of four three-mullioned windows with archivolts made by rings of broken sticks, surmounted by a weft of interwoven bands of two-tone stone elements. The contribution retraces the study activities to identify the architectural cultures that coexist in the current conformation of the building, defining the more proper conservation strategy.