Shock! Horror! Shame!

The Praetorian Palace is so named because it has always housed the cities administration and is now the Town Hall / Palermo mayor's office, whence Piazza Pretoria and Fontana Pretoria.

The fountain ws designed by by Francesco Camilliani for a private villa but bought by the Town Council and erected in front of the Town Hall in 1573. The basin is decorated with more than 50 statues of all kinds of animals, monsters, harpies, sirens and tritons. Many of them are depicted without clothes which outraged and shocked the locals so much that they "Fontana della Vergogna". (But they still kept this Fountain of Shame).

Goethe, visiting Sicily in 1787, was appalled.Read more