Dukedom of Bronte

The Dukedom of Bronte (Italian: Ducato/Ducea di Bronte ("Duchy of Bronte")) was a dukedom with the title Duke of Bronte (Italian: Duca di Bronte), referring to the town of Bronte in the province of Catania, Sicily. It was granted on 10 October 1799 at Palermo^[1] to the British Royal Navy officer Horatio Nelson by King Ferdinand III of Sicily, in gratitude for Nelson having saved the kingdom of Sicily from conquest by Revolutionary French forces under Napoleon. This was largely achieved by Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile (1798), which extinguished French naval power in the Mediterranean, but also by his having evacuated the royal family from their palace in Naples to the safety of Palermo in Sicily. It carried the right to sit in parliament within the military branch.^[2] The dukedom does not descend according to fixed rules but is transferable by the holder to whomsoever he or she desires, strangers included. Accompanying it was a grant of a 15,000 hectare (58 sq. mi.) estate, centered on the ancient monastery of Maniace, five miles north of Bronte, which Nelson ordered to be restored and embellished as his residence – thenceforth called Castello di Maniace. He appointed as his resident administrator (or governor) Johann Andreas Graeffer (d. 1802), an English-trained German landscape gardener who had recently created the English Garden at the Royal Palace of Caserta in Naples.^[3] Nelson never set foot on his estate, as he was killed in action six years later at the Battle of Trafalgar.