The Grand Hotel of Palmes emerged in 1874 from the antique household of Patrizia of the Ingham Whitaker family, built previously in 1856 and connected with a segret passage that led to an anglican church, that today you can find in front of the Hotel.
The Patrizia house had two floor levels, a winter garden (the present hall) and an exotic garden that extends to the sea. The union between the widow Ingham and Giacomo Medici changed the destiny of the ‘house', that given to a local workman trasformed it into the Grand Hotel et des Palmes, known by all those living at Palermo as ‘Le Palmes'. Ernesto Basile, one of the major teachers of the liberty style in 1907 transformed the Hotel. A wooden ceiling was created in the hall, inlaid in the present Caminetto room; simular to the present ceiling in one of the rooms of the Palazzo Montecitorio.
Today the history, the characters that have approached the Hotel, the beauty of the rooms, not only makes it one of the most famous hotels of the world , but it assigns it as a "Hotel with a Soul".