Ursino Castle — Attraction in Catania

Disclaimer: this review is very subjective, so please do some research on what are the exhibitions and decide for yourself whether this could be interesting for you. This review is purely my own experience - and I'm sure that many people will disagree with me and find the experience much more positive.

TL;DR: Exhibitions have nothing to do with the history of the castle, the exhibition on the ground floor was quite boring, and poorly designed lighting on the other floors made it painful to examine paintings.

The castle itself was great, but the exhibition inside was not. What was supposed to be a one-star review turned into a three-star review due to

1. we could have done our research before entering
2. Rosa, one of the exhibition care takers, gave us an amazing tour that made our overall visit very positive. @Rosa: once again, many thanks!

After paying 10€ a person, we discovered that unlike it was mentioned at the cashier's desk (I'm quite certain, but could be wrong) that there was a free audio guide included in the price, there are no audioguides at all. Also, as there was a little stand outside of the castle telling a bit about the castle's history, we assumed that the exhibition would be centered around the castle. We assumed wrongly.

The exhibition on the ground floor was centered around iconography, which posed little interest to me, but it is very subjective. Explanations seemed quite good, but they were difficult to understand for someone who is not into the topic.

On the first floor, the exhibition became more interesting showing interesting paintings. However, the lighting is so bad, that half of the time you cannot see anything either because there are spotlights directed directly at the paintings, or there is barely any light.

Later on, there were more interesting thematics and slightly better lighting. Also upstairs, where we would not have even bothered to go if not for Rosa, there is one quite...

A place with an assemblage of randomly selected artifacts, mostly fragments, that are so poorly lit you can barely see them. There's barely any description of the objects, and when there is, it talks mostly about who found it or lent it to the museum (who cares?). Some pieces are well described, in which case they are typically not present at all ("artefact being studied", so why don't you put something else on display?). There is a few TVs or touch panels, but they're mostly broken. Some rooms are amost completely empty, and it's not like this is a huge place. There's no over-arching narration, which you would expect in a museum of history. Basically you get to know almost nothing of the history of Catania, except a few random incidents.

The toilets are dirty and there was no toilet paper. There's a terrace in one of the towers, supposed to have a great view, but you can only see a few nearby ugly flat houses and that's only if you're tall enough to actually see over the ramparts. Otherwise all you can see is the sky.

I'm astounded this place has such a good rating thus far. If you've been in an actually good modern museum, you'll be...

A lovely castle with a museum inside. Staff were helpful and friendly. The museum quality isn't the same as much larger museums but it had a lot about Catania/Sicily's history that I thought was great, especially the ground floor exploring ancient Sicily and the influence of Greeks, Romans, Phrygians etc. Most display information is in Italian, which I used Google Lens to translate, but larger boards have information in Italian & English. As you move up the floors tike moves along, with first medieval works, then 16th & 17th century. There is no cafe inside, just vending machines on the top floor, but there is a lift to get there instead of taking the stairs. My biggest "complaint" is the lack of AC, fans, or even open windows. The lower floors were cooler, but by the time I reached the top, it was sweltering inside and I left pretty quickly after that to find somewhere...