Skip the Line in Palermo: Museum of Marionette Antonio Pasqualino

In 1975, Antonio Pasqualino founded the International Puppet Museum in his native Palermo, creating a home for the Pupi marionettes as well as for the large collection of puppetry material from several European countries and the Far East, including France, Spain, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, and many others. The Museum is spread over three floors and houses a number of exhibition spaces, a bookshop, a library, a video and a film library, and a performance space capable of accommodating a large theater program. The International Museum of Marionettes is a gem among the museums of Sicily, as it preserves and perpetuates a theatrical form the UNESCO declared part of the "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" (in 2001) – the Sicilian “Opera dei Pupi.” The Museum is a place full of charm, history, and stories, an unusual and precious window onto the history and folk traditions of Sicily – and the world.

Itinerary

1. Discover Antonio Pasqualino's renowned puppetry collection of over three thousand pieces from Italy and abroad. You'll find Sicilian marionettes (“pupi”), Japanese Bunraku puppets, and figures made by contemporary artists such as Enrico Baj, Renato Guttuso, and Polish director Tadeusz Kantor. You'll also find many shadow theater puppets from the Indonesian Wayang Kulit and Wayang Golek traditions, as well as from the Cambodian Sbek Thom traditions, both of them declared “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity World Heritage” by the UNESCO. Admission included