Palermo, as everyone knows, is a city with an enviable historical and artistic heritage, but not all of its treasures are easily accessible. The good news in recent days is that just steps from Palermo’s Teatro Massimo, in the former convent of the Filippini Fathers, two floors of the oldest museum in Sicily are now accessible again. The regional archaeological museum Antonino Salinas, founded in 1814, completes a project that lasted seventeen years and reopens with a path that pairs its historic collections with artifacts never before displayed to the public.
To celebrate the reopening of this invaluable artistic and cultural treasure, on Friday 6 November 2026 admission is free for the whole day, with mandatory reservation.
What to see at the Salinas Museum after the restoration
On the first floor you rediscover the collections that have written the history of Salinas. Among the display cases you pass from the Bourbon donations to the Etruscan art of the Casuccini collection, up to the jewels and the medal cabinet. The latter offers an unusual way to traverse the centuries. Following the thread of the coins, you go from the Phoenician era to Garibaldi’s, reading through everyday objects the political and commercial changes that have traversed the island.
The second floor hosts the grand Sala dei Mosaici and a section dedicated to the twentieth-century excavation campaigns in Palermo and western Sicily. Here lie the new highlights for returning visitors: artifacts exhibited for the first time recount what emerged from those studies and direct attention to the sites where archaeologists found them.
On the ground floor remains a highlight—the metope of Selinunte, the carved reliefs that decorated the temples of the ancient Greek colony. Seeing them up close allows you to linger on the figures and gestures that, originally, were read from below, on the façade of a temple. Before returning to Piazza Olivella it’s worth stopping in the cloisters of the former convent, where the pace of the visit eases for a few minutes, just steps from the bustle of Via Maqueda.
The works, begun in 2009, took place in several phases. The ground floor reopened in 2016, followed in 2017 by the multifunctional space Agorà. In 2022 began the reinstallation of the two upper floors, already affected by the renovation interventions. With the completion of the project, one can finally traverse the entire seventeenth-century complex that has housed the collections since 1866.
Salinas Museum of Palermo, when it reopens and how to enter for free
The inauguration of the first and second floors is scheduled for Thursday, November 5 at 5:00 PM, with a ceremony reserved for the press and authorities. The public opening of the new spaces is planned for the following day, when all three levels of the museum can be visited free of charge. The extraordinary free admission applies, however, only to Friday 6 November.
To access, one must book online on CoopCulture’s website, the operator of the museum’s services. Booking is required also for subsequent visits, for which hours and rates can be consulted at the time of organizing the visit. The Salinas is located in Piazza Olivella, in Palermo’s historic center, a short distance from Via Maqueda. From the museum you can reach on foot the Teatro Massimo and the Capo Market, two stops that can be combined with the visit in the same morning.
