Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM)

The story

The Galleria d’Arte Moderna was founded in 1910 in a few rooms of the Teatro Politeama. Since 2006 it has occupied the Sant’Anna alla Misericordia complex: the 15th-century Bonet palace and the 17th-century Franciscan convent beside the church, restored and joined into a single route.

The collection covers the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular focus on Sicilian painting: the landscapes of Francesco Lojacono and Antonino Leto, canvases by Ettore De Maria Bergler, the large history scenes of Giuseppe Sciuti, then Guttuso and the post-war years. Among the foreign works is Franz von Stuck’s Sin.

It is named after Empedocle Restivo, the city councillor who pushed for its creation.

Why it is worth it

It is a museum you visit without effort: bright rooms, a cloister to pause in, and paintings that tell of 19th-century Sicily, the sea, the countryside, village feasts, the light. Look for Lojacono’s views of Palermo from the water, then von Stuck’s Sin, whose woman and serpent stare at you from a wall of their own.