Religious itinerary of Canicattì
The itinerary starts from Piazza XXIV Maggio where the solemn façade of Maria SS. Degli Agonizzanti is located. It was built specifically to help the dying.
The first foundation dates back to 1659, at the behest of the Vicar Foraneo Don Carlo Adamo, Baron of Monte and della Grasta, when the Confraternity of the same name moved there, which had already been operating in the Mother Church since 1634.
Following the route on the map, less than 300 meters away we find ourselves in via Duomo, in front of a staircase that goes up to the churchyard of the Church of San Pancrazio or Mother Church. The construction work began in the first half of the 18th century, thanks to the initiative of Baron Gaetano Adamo and his brother Don Carlo and can be considered completed around 1765. The church was consecrated on May 25, 1874.
The third stop on our route is 600 meters away following the map, in Piazza Indipendenza, where the Church of Santo Spirito is located, which stands, together with the former Franciscan convent, on the top of the hill in the highest part of the city, characterizing its skyline. The church was built by Duke Giacomo I Bonanno Colonna and his wife Donna Antonia Balsamo, in 1633. The current building stands on a pre-existing church that belonged to the Confraternity of SS. Salvatore and erected, according to an unfortunately unverifiable tradition, on a small Norman church built by the then bishop of Agrigento, S. Gerlando di Basançon. The Franciscan Friars Minor, after taking possession of it in 1633, decided to rebuild it, entrusting the work to Frà Antonio Nocera, the architect of the opening of the convent of Canicattì.
After 500 meters on the map path is the church of San Biagio, a modest rectangle with four altars, built at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1753 it was elevated to a parish branch of the Mother Church, by the bishop mons. Lorenzo Gioeni. In 1755 a brotherhood of the same name was granted, active until 1920, by the bishop mons. Andrea Lucchesi Palli, as evidenced by the seventeenth-century statue depicting San Biagio, still preserved on the right pillar of the triumphal arch, a devotion deeply felt in the past.
The fifth point of the itinerary is located 800 meters following the map, after which you reach the confluence of several streets that constitutes the center of urban traffic and of the entire city, in this square, Largo Savoia or Piazza San Diego, stands the facade of the Church of San Diego (formerly Church of San Sebastiano). The request to build a church in honor of San Sebastiano was forwarded to the bishop of Girgenti by the Confraternity of San Sebastiano, as an ex voto following a serious plague epidemic. The cult of the Spanish Franciscan saint spread to Canicattì, very quickly, around the middle of the 17th century, when a chapel dedicated to him was added in the pre-existing Church of San Sebastiano. Due to the poor condition of the latter, it was decided to replace the obstruction, built between 1576 and 1583, with the current one, dedicated to St. Diego (Protector of Canicattì) whose work began in 1770 and ended in 1782 with the construction of the stone portals.
Following the map for another 500 meters you arrive at the Church of Santa Maria del Carmelo. The construction of the Church of Carmelo together with the convent that stood next to it can be placed around the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1557 the authorization for the construction of a chapel in honor of the Madonna della Catena is documented, granted by the Carmelite fathers to a certain Giovanni Falco.
After a kilometer following the route on the map you arrive at one of the most beautiful churches in Canicattì, the Church of San Domenico, with an adjoining Convent. The date of completion of the works, 1612, is carved high up on the wall facing the entrance door of the former convent. It was built under the barony of Filippo II Bonanno and La Rocca.
The Church of San Francesco is the last point of our itinerary and is located one and a half kilometers on the route indicated on the map. It stands on a hill and with its grandeur seems to bless the entire town, with the bronze statue depicting San Francesco, placed in the square in front, with his arms outstretched, in the shape of a Cross, communicating to everyone his greeting of PEACE AND GOOD. The facade is framed by architectural divisions in sandstone, which have lost much of their plastic modeling in the carvings, but which nevertheless manage to create a suggestive atmosphere at sunset, when the sun illuminates the white plaster of the surfaces. The current monumental church, to which the ancient Convent of the Franciscan Fathers is annexed, suppressed after the annexation of Sicily to the Kingdom of Italy, today a “Nursing home for the elderly”, was erected on the foundations of a primitive “Oratorio”. San Francesco in 1554, according to historians, with the main contribution of Baron G. Battista Bonanno, then Lord of Canicattì, who in 1559 designated it as their burial place before building it in the church of Santo Spirito.
