Overview
Villa Piccolo is located a few kilometres from Cape Orlando, a municipality in the metropolitan city of Messina. Built at the end of the 9th century, it was the home of the Piccolo family, brothers Casimiro Piccolo (Baron of Calanovella), Lucio Piccolo and Agata Giovanna Piccolo, who lived there until their death. The former devoted himself to photography, occultism and watercolours of the fantastic genre, the latter is known for his lyrics, while his sister Agata Giovanna was passionate about botany. Together with them, their mother, Baroness Teresa Mastrogiovanni Tasca Filangeri di Cutò, also lived at Villa Piccolo (once called Villa Vina) until the year of her death in 1954. A much-visited room is the guest room, which had as a regular guest during the summer months, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of The Leopard and first cousin of the Piccolo family. His mother Beatrice, in fact, was sister of Teresa Mastrogiovanni. Several famous pages of the novel were written here and it was from Villa Piccolo, after Lampedusa\'s death, that Lucio Piccolo sent the original typescript of The Leopard to Mondadori, which was then rejected, before finally being published by Feltrinelli.
