3/11/18: Today we visited Palazzo Steri, a castle that was turned into a prison during the Spanish Inquisition. A lot of architectural details and decoration still remain in the space today. Most notable of these are the jail cell wall paintings done by the prisoners themselves. Because they were not given paint, the prisoners had to be very creative—they scraped red pigment off the floor and mixed it with bodily fluids to create paint. The resulting paintings are very impressive. One wall featured a prayer in Latin, Italian, and English, as well as a monster eating various Biblical figures (shown below). Others included ships, maps of Sicily, and other religious imagery.
