The palace hosted receptions, concerts, and political summits (including early discussions on measures to protect the carusi of the sulfur mines) and welcomed prominent figures such as Prime Minister Francesco Crispi, a great admirer of the Count. The family chapel with Venetian-style flooring and the original counterweight elevator — a technological rarity of the time — have survived to this day. While the exterior retains the sober honey hues of the local stone, the interior astonishes with the light streaming from a polychrome skylight that floods the grand staircase with lagoon-like reflections, making stuccoes and gilded mirrors vibrate.
After a period of partial abandonment, the descendants undertook a conservation restoration: today some rooms house professional offices and small exhibitions, while the entrance hall, opened during the “Vie dei Tesori” festival, allows visitors to admire the stucco frieze with the intertwined coats of arms of the Testasecca and Longo families. Framed by the contemporary façades of Benintende and Tumminelli-Paternò, the palace tells in a single glance the story of Caltanissetta’s trajectory between mining epic, social patronage, and refined urban civilization, restoring to visitors the sophisticated atmosphere of a city that, between the 19th and 20th centuries, liked to call itself the “little Athens” of the Sicilian hinterland.