Galleria Regionale Siciliana

Lonely Planet review

The arterial Via Alloro hides Palermo's best museum, the wonderful Galleria Regionale Siciliana, full of treasures and paintings from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. The building itself is a gorgeous Catalan-Gothic palace sensitively transformed into an exhibition space in 1957 by Carlo Scarpa, one of Italy's leading designers.

The gallery gives a great insight into Sicilian painting - an art form sadly lacking in more recent years - and numbers among its treasures the Trionfo della Morta (Triumph of Death), a magnificent fresco. Other treasures include a remarkable 12th-century Arab door frame and Antonello da Messina's well-known panel of the Assunzione (Assumption).