Palazzo degli Elefanti

Palazzo degli Elefanti (English: "Elephants Palace") is a historical building in Catania, region of Sicily, southern Italy.

The eastern, southern, and western façades were however designed at a later stage by Giovan Battista Vaccarini, a highly prolific architect of Catania during its urban reconstruction in the 18th-century, while the northern one was by Carmelo Battaglia.

In 1736 in the center of Piazza del Duomo, Vaccarini erected a fountain with an ancient black lava stone statue of an elephant carrying on its back an Egyptian red granite obelisk, marked with hieroglyphs.

In 1677, it had been erected standing (sans elephant) in the courtyard of the Palazzo degli Elefanti, but like nearly everything else in town, it was toppled in 1693.

The base of the fountain has two reliefs depicting allegorical images of the two rivers that once coursed through Catania: the Simeto and Amenano.