Church of Saints Marco and Biagio in Petralia Sottana
The Church of Saints Marco and Biagio in Petralia Sottana and the adjacent College of Mary constitute an ancient and important religious complex in the village.
The College was built in 1778 by the will of the priest Ignazio Bellingreri with the aim of creating an institution aimed at the education of less well-off young people.
The church, of seventeenth-century origins, was rebuilt in 1814 when the Archpriest Don Nicola Polizzotti granted its use to the college on the condition of rebuilding it as it was in a terrible state of conservation.
The simple gabled façade has a single entrance door surmounted by a large circular window.
The interior, with a single nave, houses several works: a canvas depicting the Madonna del Gesù; a polychrome papier-mâché statue at whose feet there is a small canvas with the Virgin of Sorrows; a canvas with the Virgin, San Gaetano da Thiene and San Filippo Neri; it houses the papier-mâché statue of San Espedito da Melitene; the 1611 canvas by Giuseppe Salerno of the Madonna delle Grazie with the holy martyrs Marco and Biagio placed on the main altar.
