GALARDO
Galardo, a journey through our distant origins
The name ‘Galardo’ seems to derive from ‘Al Galid’, attributed by the well-known Arab geographer named Idrisi who, commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily, settled in Palermo in 1145 and that created a collection of geographical maps which later became famous throughout the world. The long journey in the South led Idrisi to discover a group of a few houses around a main courtyard, ‘Al Galid’ in fact: a place surrounded by unspoiled nature, an almost surreal peace, a place that many of you still love to consider today. Out of time and space.
Galardo, when it was discovered by Idrisi, had that structure that we Sicilians like to call ‘Baglio’, a type of architecture common in many parts of our island and reminiscent of the typical medieval fiefdoms. We can tell you that, in all probability, the Arab-Normans lived in those buildings with simplicity, kept the fruits of their crops seasonally, and lived their rural everyday life.
Galardo, over the centuries, became a monastery and was managed by the wise nuns of the Curia of the S.S. Salvatore di Corleone, between the mid-1400s and mid-1800s. It was amazing to find some documents in which the nuns annotated year by year and in great detail the profits deriving from each land, almost as if they were modern accountants and accountants! However, after the suppression of 117 monasteries in southern Italy which took place a few years after Garibaldi’s landing in Sicily, in 1860, the Galardo feud was also redistributed following progressive privatization. Thus a new era begins, the era of the Provenzano family.
The Galardo fiefdom was purchased by our great-great-great-grandfather Sebastiano Provenzano in 1872 who will bequeath an established farm and some land cultivated mainly with wheat to his nephew Nunu.
Galardo, in recent years, has been dyed with new colors and different shades thanks to the work of Orsola Provenzano, grandson of Orsola Briuccia, who leads the company to be recognized for the first time at an international level: Orsola, a great lover of agriculture since she was a child, first she left for America and then around Europe and, proud of her origins and her family history, she started the oil trade thanks also to those who first believed in her and in her perseverance.
Orsola thus leaves a certain job as a lawyer, leaves Milan after a degree from the Catholic University, deepens her studies in the agricultural-entrepreneurial sector at the University of Palermo, becomes one of the first oil sommeliers in Sicily and then moves to the his company, comparing it to a jewel to be carefully guarded and preserved.
