Byzantine rock church of San Pietro in Buscemi
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The rock church of San Pietro is a sacred building dating back to the Byzantine era. It is a site of great panoramic and landscape impact.
The site rises in the area of an ancient Greek settlement, destroyed by the Arabs, in the mountain gorge of Santa Rosalia.
In this area, already during the 19th century , numerous scholars brought to light the remains of frescoes of San Marco and Santa Sofia, dating back to early Christianity. The church was discovered by Paolo Orsi during the exploration of a prehistoric burial ground nearby: it had been transformed into a sheepfold and enclosed with a dry wall.
The rock structure has a rectangular shape with large rock pillars, decorated with capitals . The altar is located on a raised side part carved into the living rock. From the typology of the structure and the altar it is believed that an oriental-type liturgy was practiced in this place. Connected to the liturgical area there are also two burial hypogea.
The presence of funerary hypogea has led to the hypothesis that this place had housed an early Christian cemetery area and only later a place of worship. In confirmation of this, an epigraph flanked by a Greek cross was noted inside the hypogeum, which commemorates the deposition of a character named Peter.
Outside the church there is a small sepulchral complex with tombs rock.
