Churches & Places of Worship

A church with a reclusori already existed in the early 1500s.

Used as a boarding school for spinsters, the monastery was granted to the Benedictine nuns. The neoclassical style of the façade dates back to the end of the 1700s.

In one nave, it preserves the high altar with a seventeenth-century chapel in polychrome stone, in which the statue with the fercolo of the Madonna delle Grazie is exposed.

It preserves the beautiful grating of the choir, an eighteenth-century pipe organ and the seventeenth-century statues of Sant’Agata and other Virgin Martyrs.

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.

After the earthquake of 1693, which destroyed the church of Santa Maria, it was rebuilt in 1722 further downstream in Militello in Val di Catania.

The façade in Baroque style, designed by the architect Giuseppe Ferrara.

It has richly carved columns surmounted by a broken curved pediment, and stands out scenographically at the bottom of a staircase.

An imposing bell tower dominates next to it.

Open to worship in 1741, and dedicated to the Madonna della Stella, patron saint of the city.

In 1969 it was declared a Marian Sanctuary.

Santa Maria, casket of works of art

Divided into three naves, the barrel vault is decorated in stucco and frescoed by the militellese painter Giuseppe Barone in 1947.

Other stuccos are the work of the eighteenth-century artist Onofrio Russo, according to the eighteenth-century fashion of Giacomo Serpotta from Palermo.

Along the aisles there are twelve altars rich in precious works of art.

They include some from the church of Santa Maria la Vetere: the wooden and hemp statue of the Madonna della Stella, dated 1618, the object of enormous devotion and the three stone sarcophagi of Blasco II, Carlo and Vincenzo Barresi, dated between 1400 and 1500, in Gothic-Catalan and Renaissance style.

The altarpiece of the Nativity of Jesus is a work of art from 1487 by the Florentine Andrea della Robbia.

The Nativity of Mary by Olivio Sozzi also stands out, an altarpiece framed by a wooden machine from 1753, and a wooden statue of Christ on the column, the object of great devotion during Holy Week. A precious treasure is kept in the sacristy.

The "Nativity" by Andrea della Robbia

The writer Pietro Carrera, parish priest of the church of Santa Maria, attributes to Antonio Pietro Barresi the commission of a splendid Altarpiece of the Nativity of Jesus to the Florentine sculptor Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525).

It is dated 1487, the year of his expedition to Militello.

This is the highest expression of the Italian Renaissance in Militello, a masterpiece made in high relief in the technique of glazed polychrome ceramics.

The Pala is made in 80 glazed ceramic tiles, which measures 3.40 x 2.30. It was placed in the frontal altar of the southern nave.

How did a similar work arrive in Militello?

It takes 17 crates to contain all the tiles: transported by sea from the port of Pisa to that of Palermo, the crates with their precious contents reached Militello by land, with carts.

We know that Barresi paid a total of 101 gold florins (of which a third for "postage", we would say today).

It was a reasonable figure for the time, but the lord of Militello paid no heed to equaling the principles of Italian Renaissance courts.

Still Carrera reports of a fire suffered by the Church of Santa Maria in 1618, in which the altarpiece also suffered damage.

After the earthquake of 1693, which destroyed two thirds of the Church of Santa Maria, the precious Pala was rescued.

When the new church of Santa Maria la Stella was built, the Pala was placed in the right aisle, where it can still be admired in all its beauty.

In the upper lunette is depicted the Father among the angels, which surmounts the Nativity scene, in a blaze of angels playing music and cherubs, on a naturalistic background.

The lower lunette band Christ is represented at the last supper, in the center between the Apostles.

The collegiate Church of S. Maria Maggiore in Lanuvio was a Romanesque church dated the year 1240 in the nave, then restored in 1675 (as reported in an epigraph on the facade) by Filippo Cesarini.

Inside is the tombstone of the Colonna, a canvas of Baciccio depicting the Tragedy of Calvary and one of St. Philip (San Filippo) attributed to Domenichino.

This church of the Annunciation built in neoclassical style is located in the fishing village of Palo Laziale in Ladispoli.

Originally the workers of the Odescalchi family and the fishermen lived in this village.

The church is near the Aurelia road and incorporates the ancient Roman road that connected Rome with the south of France.

The church was built in 1703 and has a single nave with a square plan.

It ends with an apse in the altar area that is elevated above the rest of the church.

On the altar, made with different types of marble and coloured stucco, there is a large painting of the Annunciation.

The facade has a double order and ends with a gable.

The entrance portal is framed by a small gable.
 

In 1910 Prince Ladislao decided to build the town of Ladispoli to provide accommodation to the residents of Castello.

In Ladispoli he built two churches and San Rosario is right in the middle of the town.

The church of the Sacred Heart in Grottaferrata was built in 1918 by Maria Santovetti Tanlongo.

The style is neo-Gothic and the bell tower was added in the sixties.