page_title: Asmundo family
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Asmundo family / History
context_page_description: Asmundo is an old Sicilian noble family that has played a notable role in the island's political, cultural, and economic history.
context_section_description: In the course of history, members of various branches of the Asmundo family occupied the most important administrative positions in the Kingdom of Sicily, ever since the time of the Aragonese. Adamo Asmundo, doctor in civil law at the University of Padua, was rationum magister (master of finances) at the Court of Royal Property and luogotenente generale. In 1432 he took part in the special Royal Council that governed the island in the absence of King Alfonso V, who was on his expedition to Djerba. In the same year he became President of the Realm with viceregal functions until 1435, a position that he would again attain in 1439 and 1449, under King Alfonso.
  Holders of many fiefs and noble titles, the Asmundos have had a profound effect on the political and cultural history of Sicily. In 1434, Adamo Asmundo, along with Battista Platamone, founded the University of Catania, one of the oldest universities in Italy and in the world. Among the first lecturers in theology appointed by Viceroy Lope Ximénez de Urrea y de Bardaixi in 1445 was the Carmelite Nicola Asmundo, a graduate of the University of Bologna.
  Bartolomeo Asmundo, a senator of Catania from 1492 to 1532, was a reformer of studies at the city's university from 1495 to 1497. He is considered the first lyric poet of Sicily and one of the greatest poets in the Sicilian language. His fame is connected with some canzoni on sacred and profane themes inspired by Petrarchism, translated from Sicilian into Italian by Pietro Bembo (1470–1547). His achievements include characterizing the canzuna as a major poetic form as distinct from the sonnet, and promoting Sicilian as a sublime language of poetry.
  Following the earthquake that destroyed Catania and the Val di Noto in 1693, Giuseppe Asmundo was one of the leaders of urban and cultural rebirth in the affected areas. In Catania, among other works, he rebuilt the girls' school Conservatorio delle Verginelle as a refuge for needy orphan girls and contributed, through the prior Bartolomeo Asmundo, to the construction of the church of the Immacolata Concezione ai Minoritelli. In Noto, he was the commissioner general for reconstruction. Together with Giuseppe Lanza (vicar general for the Val di Noto), Giovanni Montalto, Sipione Coppola, and the Jesuit architect Angelo Italia, he was one of the architects of the form of renaissance that took the name Sicilian Baroque.
  In 1701, Consalvo Asmundo received from King Philip V a licentia populandi (concession to populate a fief) to construct a center of habitation near the Villa Asmundo in the fief of San Giuliano. First the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel was built, completed in 1711, and then the houses. Villasmundo, by request of the founder, received legal recognition in 1715.
  In the first half of the 19th century, Giuseppe Asmundo Cirino di Gisira was one of the members of the Decurionate (city council) of Catania, to whom is owed the completion of the seaport, crucial for the city's economic development and for its economic supremacy in eastern Sicily. Among the works of patronage of the arts by the Catania Decurionate, that of 1819 in favor of the composer Vincenzo Bellini has remained celebrated.
  Michele Scammacca Asmundo and Francesco Asmundo were president and vice-president of the administrative council of the Sicilian Public Works Company founded in 1886. The company began its work building the Ferrovia Circumetnea in 1889. The route around Mount Etna that connects Riposto to the Port of Catania, going through the towns at the foot of Etna, became completely accessible in 1898.
  At the beginning of the twentieth century, Giuseppe Zappalà Asmundo and his wife Anna Grimaldi Francica Nava were among the promoters of the Sicilian Belle Époque. In 1910, they created the Teatro Minimo in the halls of their palazzo, a rare example of a private theater where shows by Catanian authors are produced, some directed by Giovanni Verga. In 1934, they donated to the Museo Civico at Castello Ursino a collection of paintings, archaeological finds, porcelains, majolicas, antique arms, co
caption: Bernardo Celentano (1835–1863), Provenzano Salvani in the Piazza of the Campo, c. 1856. Museo civico al Castello Ursino, Catania
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