Municipal Theater Eliodoro Sollima

The history of Marsala's municipal theater began on May 11, 1807, when King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon gave don Leopoldo Fedele permission to "... build a permanent theater in order to be able to represent comedies, tragedies and works in music ...". The theater functioned regularly until 1824 and was then closed; then in 1840, the Municipality expropriated it for public use, renovating and enlarging it to include the addition of decorations and props.

The programming went on, more or less regularly, for decades, until 1952. It was also the seat of the prestigious Municipal Music School, directed by Maestro Giovanni Galfano, a reference point in all of western Sicily for the training of musicians and teachers.  Up unto 1968, the theater was considered "the only structure of its kind."

Due to the complete renovation, in 1994, returned it to the city with all its beauty and its warmth, and to the programming of theatrical and musical performances.

The municipal theater is now named after Maestro Eliodoro Sollima, a composer from Marsala, who, for years, was director of the Teatro Massimo and of the Music Conservatory of Palermo.

The theater has nearly three hundred seats, three tiers of boxes, stalls and a gallery.  In recent years, it has hosted cultural initiatives of various kinds, and has returned to be one of the most loved cultural places by the Marsalese. The elegance of the whole, however, finds its point of excellence in the neoclassical decorations of the ceiling, which traditionally "force" those who enter it to spend a few minutes with their noses up.