Church of Santa Domenica in Cammarata
The Church of Santa Domenica a Cammarata, known as Badia, with an adjoining Benedictine convent, today owned by the municipality, is an important religious complex in the village.
The church, which stands in the heart of the historic centre, was built towards the middle of the fifteenth century and belonged to the confraternity of S. Filippo of Agirò. The adjoining monastery also dates back to 1400 and was built at the behest of the Branciforti family. Towards the middle of the 18th century the church and the monastery were handed over to the Benedictine nuns who, in the annexed rooms, founded the new convent intended to replace the Annunziata convent which was now unsafe and collapsed due to a landslide. In 1866, following the abolition of religious corporations, the monastery was transformed into a town hall.
The simple gabled façade is divided into two orders by a string course and punctuated by pilaster strips surmounted by red stone capitals.
The interior, with a single nave, preserves valuable seventeenth-century paintings and stuccos, carried out at the behest of the abbess Romano in 1842 for 300 onze. Furthermore, numerous jealousies can be noted, since the church was annexed to a cloistered Benedictine convent.
Among the works kept inside the church, of particular value are: the canvas of Santa Domenica, attributed at Buttafuoco dated 1595; the 18th century statues of San Filippo di Agira and the Immaculate Conception; a silver tabernacle, an antependium in silver foil on red fabric and two paintings of the Adoration of the Magi, placed in the altar of the crucifix; a gilded monstrance decorated with coral, a seventeenth-century gift from the Branciforti family, and a silver tabernacle for the exhibition on Holy Thursday kept in the sacristy.
