Rock church of San Nicola in Buccheri
The rock church of San Nicola in Buccheri is immersed in the Wood of Santa Maria, in le croci.
There is little historical information about this site, the historian V. Friend who remembers the walls covered with Greek-style frescoes.
The church is housed within a small natural cave suitably expanded. The church consisted of two small rooms and, presumably, a vestibule that has now collapsed. Worship was professed in the room on the left, while on the right there are the remains of a semicircular apse complete with subellium, a seat for ministers of worship.
The church was attributed to San Nicola because the scholar Guarrella reported having read the epigraph "Nicolas" in a frescoed panel on the left of the large niche. The inscription is now invisible, but the iconography of the frescoes could be appropriate for the cult of San Nicola. Very few testimonies remain of the pictorial decorations. We can still distinguish a cherub with open arms, bearded male figures with a miter on their heads and the figure of the Virgin.
