ABSTRACT
As befitted the rank of one of the highest posts of the Order, the official residence of the Hospitaller Prior in Sicily was palatial. Located in Messina, rather than in the city of Palermo which was the primus inter pares as far as the residences of the Sicilian nobility were concerned, it typified the set-up of an elite establishment of the higher echelons of society in seventeenth-century Sicily. The whole establishment was set on extensive grounds and adjacent to the church of the Order, San Giovanni Battista, overlooking the piazza. The time between the two prioral visits of 1604 and 1749 showed major refurbishments which were carried out on the prioral buildings.
