Fontana House in Novara di Sicilia
Casa Fontana in Novara di Sicilia, located in the ancient urban core, is a seventeenth-century residence of modest dimensions in which Sister Teresa Fontana was born and spent her youth, died in an air of holiness and buried in the Cathedral at the foot of the altar of S. Anna.
The house, which can be dated between the second half of the 16th and 17th centuries, has a façade rich in architectural elements. The structure consists of three elevations above ground and has a front curtain wall that incorporates the characteristic openings.
Of particular artistic value is the keystone of the portal on the ground floor which depicts a fountain, noble symbol of the family, formed by two semicircular goblet-shaped basins crossed by a jet of water that flows from a shell-shaped spring, a very widespread figure in the late sixteenth-century and Baroque taste. Of particular value is also the vaguely arabesque modeling of the piers of the balcony on the first floor which recalls the stylistic features of the Catalan Gothic period.
