Il Castello Incantato - Sciacca

Il Castello Incantato (the Enchanted Castle) is the most visited place in the province of Agrigento after the Valley of the Temples.

The Bentivegna estate is a land on which Filippo Bentivegna built his kingdom. A special kingdom of faces carved in stone and trees, which for the artist represented his subjects. He was described as crazy but after his death he was praised worldwide as one of the greatest exponents of Art Brut .

At the beginning of the 20th century he moved to the United States in search of fortune and came into contact with world boxing champion Jhonny Dundee (born Giuseppe Curreri, originally from Sciacca) who encouraged him to take up the sport, but it was only a short intermezzo. In the last period before returning to Sciacca, he found work in a company that was building the railroad that would connect the two sides of the United States. While at work he had an accident that allowed him to receive a small disability pension.

It is not known what happened to him in America. It is said that he fell in love with a girl, but her family disagreed and beat Bentivegna, almost killing him. He fell into a coma and when he woke up his personality changed : he was no longer the same and decided to return to Sciacca, buying an abandoned farm where he would spend the rest of his life sculpting faces.

The Enchanted Castle was born . A virtual world, consisting of subjects, friends, family members who were sculpted in stone as above, with whom Filippo would converse and each statue had a name and surname that he gave them.

Willem Vandenameele