Maria Stella DI TRAPANI
Keywords
Her research focuses on the history of Italian art and architecture in the first half of the twentieth century, with particular attention to the relationships between the figurative arts and architecture in the Fascist period; to buildings of power (courthouses, town halls, government palaces) from Italian Unification to the fall of Fascism; to the representative and propagandistic role of Italian architecture abroad, with specific reference to the Case d'Italia and the work of Clemente Busiri Vici; to the rural foundation towns in Sicily and their artistic and architectural heritage; to Sicilian identity as expressed in public art and architecture during the Fascist era; to the history of exhibitions, with a focus on colonial and identity-related themes during the Ventennio; and to post-earthquake reconstruction in Sicily from the early modern period to the late twentieth century.
Maria Stella Di Trapani is an art and architectural historian specialising in twentieth-century Italy. She graduated with honours in Art History from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (2013) and earned her PhD in Art History and Architectural History (SSD ICAR/18, XXXIII cycle) at the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo (2021), with a dissertation on the relationship between the arts and architecture in the first half of the twentieth century as expressed through the Courts of Justice in Sicily. She has conducted advanced research and training at leading national and international institutions, including the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, the École du Louvre, the Université Paris 7 Diderot, and the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, where she is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow.
Since 2026 she has been a Contract Lecturer in Contemporary Architectural History and Contemporary Art History at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the University of Catania, Special Teaching Structure of Syracuse (Architecture degree programme LM-4, 12 ECTS). In the academic years 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 she also served as Contract Lecturer in Architectural History at the Department of Humanities of the same university, on the three-year degree programme in Cultural Heritage (6 ECTS). Previously, she held the position of Qualified Tutor (SSD ICAR/18) at the SDS of Architecture and Cultural Heritage in Syracuse (2022–2023) and Research Fellow at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the University of Catania (2023–2024). She was researcher and member of the Scientific Committee of the University Museum System of the University of Palermo (2022), in connection with the exhibition "Luigi Epifanio architetto e i suoi cammini siciliani". She was awarded the Gianni Franzone Study Grant (1st edition, international competition) by the Centro Studi Wolfsoniana – Palazzo Ducale in Genoa (2023), and the residential fellowship of the Centro Vittore Branca at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice (2021). She holds a licence as a Tourist Guide registered with the Regional Register of the Sicilian Region (no. 1020, 2017) and a first-level Master's degree in Economics and Management of Art and Cultural Heritage from Il Sole 24 Ore Business School in Milan (2014). Since 2021 she has been a member of AISTARCH – Italian Association for Architectural History, and since 2023 of AISU – Italian Association for Urban History. She is a member of the editorial board of the Class A journal LEXICON. Storie e Architettura in Sicilia e nel Mediterraneo (from 2025) and previously served on the editorial board of IN FOLIO (2019–2021).
Maria Stella Di Trapani is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome (July–December 2025 and September 2026–March 2027), where she is conducting research on the architecture of the Case d'Italia designed by Clemente Busiri Vici as instruments of Fascist Italian identity abroad, within the Department of Prof. Tristan Weddigen. She also participates in the international project "Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture: From Nation Building to Now" (Bibliotheca Hertziana, dir. Prof. Weddigen, coord. Prof. Carmen Belmonte).
She is a member of the research unit of the University of Catania within the SPAZIDENTITÀ project – École Française de Rome (2022–2026), investigating the construction of Italian national identity through cities, architecture and museums from the Cisalpine Republic to the end of Fascism.
She contributed to the PRIN 2022 project "Building Civic Identities. Towards an Atlas of Communal Palaces in Italian Urban History" (2024–2025), coordinated by the University of Genoa (PI M. Folin) with the Universities of Catania, Padua, Roma Tor Vergata and the Politecnico di Torino, focusing on the cataloguing and critical review of Sicilian communal palaces.
She also contributed to the Ministry of Culture's Census of Italian Architecture from 1945 to the Present (2024), authoring seven entries on the national census portal.
She previously conducted archival research (SSD ICAR/18) for the exhibition "Luigi Epifanio architetto e i suoi cammini siciliani" (University of Palermo, University Museum System, 2022), and held a research fellowship on the identity of power buildings in Sicily between the post-Unification period and Fascism, within the SPAZIDENTITÀ project (University of Catania, 2023–2024).
She has delivered papers at more than twenty national and international conferences and study days, including the CIHA (Lyon 2024), the International Congresses of AISU (Ferrara 2023, Palermo 2025), the CIRICE congresses (Naples 2021, 2023), conferences organised by the INHA and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 2022), by the École Française de Rome and the Archivio del Moderno (Venice 2024, Balerna 2024), by the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Rome 2023, 2026), and by several Italian universities.
She has organised and co-curated scientific events, including the Study Days "Palazzi di città nel secondo Novecento" (Catania 2025, with P. Barbera and F. Scibilia) and session 6.14 of the XII International Congress of AISU (Palermo 2025, with L. Grieco and R.M.M. Caruso).
She is co-editor of volume no. 2 of the Proceedings of the XII AISU Congress, entitled "Costruire il potere. Rappresentazioni, istituzioni e trasformazioni dello spazio urbano tra Medioevo ed età contemporanea" (with F. Scibilia). She has delivered invited teaching seminars at the University of Roma Tor Vergata (2025) and the University of Tuscia (2025).
She supervises undergraduate dissertations in the Cultural Heritage degree programme at the University of Catania, on topics related to twentieth-century Sicilian architecture.