Chiaramonte Palace (Steri) is a fortressed palace typical of those that served as residences for noble families during the middle ages.Built in 1307, the palace was in fact the setting for a number of well-documented power struggles throughout Palermo's history, particularly among prominent local nobility and Spanish rulers. The palace also served as the official residence of the Spanish Viceroy, after which it was used as the headquarters of the Sicilian arm of the Inquisition beginning in 1601.

With the abolition of the Inquisition in 1782, Chiaramonte Palace was used as the law courts by the Bourbons, with the cellars converted into jail cells. Even today, some of the graffiti written by the prisoners on the walls of their cells can still be viewed by the public as a sobering, yet historically-significant testament to the building’s past.

Today, Chiaramonte Palace is used as Rectorate and executive offices of University of Palermo’s administrative staff, the structure bears little similarity to its former usage, although it has lost little of its historical importance and value. Even in the recently opened wing of the building, one can walk through the corridors and get a powerful sense of what it must have been like for the unfortunates that were tried in the courts, and subsequently imprisoned in the cellar.

Apart from the detailed graffiti that is almost a collective body of art in its own right, visitors to the palace could also view La Vucciria, which is unarguably the most famous work of Italian painter Renato Guttuso.