Review of Historical Geography and Toponomastics, vol. VII, no. 13-14, 2012, pp. 89-112 VILLA FLORIO FROM FAVIGNANA ISLAND: ARCHITECTONIC AND FUNCTONAL HISTORY Grazia VECCHIO* * Doctor in Philosophy of Geography and Lecturer, University of Catania, Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, Department of Humanistic Sciences, Monastero dei Benedettini, No. 32, 95124, Catania, Italy email:
[email protected] Abstract: Villa Florio from Favignana island: architectonic and functional history. The far Sicilian West which, besides the Egadi islands, includes the area between Marsala and Trapani is characterized by a specific landscape and socio-economic unity. In this context, the island of Favignana may be considered as the last vertex of a hypothetical economic-industrial triangle (Palermo – Marsala/Trapani – Favignana) characterized by a whole series of activities referable to the bourgeois house of Florio, one of the most powerful in Sicily from the second half of 19th century to the first decades of 20th. In the area under examination it is in Favignana that, after having bought the Egadi in 1874, they had Villa Florio built by G. Damiani Almeyda. At the same time this was intended to be an official country house and link with their tuna fisheries which were then the first industry in the Mediterranean and now significant testimony of industrial archaeology. Starting from the architectonic and functional history of the Villa and tuna fisheries and passing to an analysis which through the Florio family events, connected to those of some great English entrepreneurs, outlines their ascent and decline, in this paper we aim at reconstructing the interconnection between the Florio enterprises and the history of the aforesaid territory in relation to that of Sicily.