Basilica Sanctuary Maria SS. del Mazzaro in Mazzarino
The Basilica Sanctuary of Maria Santissima del Mazzaro or Santa Maria Maggiore is an important place of worship in the city and a fine example of late-Baroque architecture.
The original structure was built around 1100 by Manfredi, lord of the city, in the place where, according to legend, a painting depicting the Madonna delle Grazie and a crucifix with a lit lamp were found. The church was then destroyed by the Val di Noto earthquake in 1693 and rebuilt starting from 1760 based on a design by the architect Natale Buonajuto from Siracusa.
The eighteenth-century façade in late Sicilian Baroque style is made with blocks of carved local sandstone and squared. The façade has a pyramidal development and is divided into three orders by projecting cornices and stringcourses: on the first order there are three entrances alternating with two pairs of pilasters decorated with Corinthian capitals. The three doors are surmounted by portals with semi-circular gables with a lowered arch; on the second order there is a large window surmounted by a broken tympanum and flanked by two pairs of pilasters and two curled volutes; in the third order there is the bell vault, with three cells that house the three nineteenth-century bronze bells from the Gerbino foundry in Caltagirone.
The interior is divided into three naves by ten pillars decorated with stucco, covered with pilasters and pilasters, and surmounted from Corinthian capitals. The finishing cornice presents valuable floral motifs, the work of the Palermo artist Giuseppe Utveggio. The central vault, also decorated with floral motifs, features frescoes by the Palermo painter Giuseppe Carta, which trace the history of the basilica since the discovery of the sacred icon.
Among the works kept inside the church, of notable artistic value they are: the painting on wooden boards of the Madonna del Mazzaro or delle Grazie, in Greek-Byzantine style found in a tunnel in 1125; the wooden statue of the Virgin and Child, a work from 1874 by Vincenzo Genovese.
