Church of Santa Venera in Avola
The Church of Santa Venera in Avola is the building of worship dedicated to the patron saint of the city.
It was built in 1713 based on a design by Michelangelo Alessi. The dome, which collapsed in the 1848 earthquake, was rebuilt in 1962 by the engineer. Pietro Lojacono.
The façade, divided into three superimposed orders, is enriched by niches and a bell tower with three arches, and presents the effigy of the patron saint of Avola in the centre.
The interior, in the shape of a Latin cross, it is divided into three naves with three arches on each side. On the sides of the apse are the chapel of Santa Venera, the patron saint of Avola, and the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.
Among the works kept inside the church of particular artistic value are: the oval canvas with the eighteenth-century Sermon of Santa Venera attributed to the Neto painter Costantino Carasi, enclosed in a very valuable rocaille frame, and placed above the main altar; the seventeenth-century canvases with the SS. Crispino and Crispiniano, protectors of shoemakers, and S. Marta; the eighteenth-century paintings of the Holy Family, Jesus and Mary, San Vincenzo Ferreri; the simulacrum of Santa Venera, a work from 1863 by Raffaele Abbate from Naples, covered with silver sheets, worked in embossed and chiselled work, by Emanuele Puglisi Caudullo from Catania; the organ, the work of Polizzi da Modica, from 1901.
