Militello in Val di Catania. Church and Female Monastery of San Giovanni Battista

Founded around the early 1400s and damaged by the earthquake, the Church still preserves the Renaissance portal and, inside, the seventeenth-century majolica floor, made in Caltagirone, and the choir of the nuns in the choir.

Here, in addition to the statue of St. John the Baptist, the precious relic of his thumb is venerated; the precious liturgical furnishings are now displayed in the Treasury of Santa Maria della Stella.

A "special" bond with San Giovanni

The monastery of San Giovanni Battista had a rich dowry by Eleonora Speciale, daughter of the viceroy of Sicily Niccolò Speciale and widow of Baron Blasco II Barresi of Militello.

Eleonora chose this monastery, in 1470, to spend the last years of her life there. From the monastery of San Giovanni comes the Portrait of Niccolò Speciale, from the same Eleonora commissioned to the great Dalmatian sculptor Francesco Laurana in 1471, one of the most distinguished representatives of Renaissance sculpture.

Eleonora was, therefore, the daughter of one of the major historical figures of mid-fifteenth-century Sicily: Niccolò, in fact, a member of the Special family of the barons of Nicosia, was Viceroy of Sicily from 1423 to 1432 upon the investiture of the Aragonese king Alfonso the Magnanimous in person.