The church of Santa Maria del Monte Carmelo, known as the Carmine, forms with the former Carmelite convent a monumental complex between corso Vittorio Emanuele and via Galatea, on the edge of the old town of Acireale. The convent, founded in 1502 by a small church of San Francesco on the road to Catania, is the oldest religious house in the town. The first church already existed in 1554, and the convent, closed at the end of the sixteenth century, reopened in 1621.
What to see
The earthquake of 1693 brought down part of the buildings and the reconstruction enlarged the church; the one of 1818 caused further damage. The Baroque façade, completed in 1786, rises in three ever smaller orders and plays on the alternation between white Syracuse stone and lava stone: on the first a pair of pale stone columns holds up the architrave over the entrance, on the second two lava columns frame the clock at the centre of the façade, on the third four small lava columns support the bell chamber. Large stone vases decorate the buttresses.
The interior has a single nave, with three arches on each side and rich stucco decoration, and stained-glass windows with Saint Sebastian and Saint Venera, the town's patrons. The canvases of the first altars are by Alessandro Vasta: the Virgin with Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, Saints Albert of Messina and Angelus of Licata, protectors of the Sicilian provinces of the Order, the Madonna giving the scapular to Saint Simon Stock, and the vision of the prophet Elijah. There is also a Presentation in the Temple of the Leonardesque school, and in the presbytery, between twisted columns, the eighteenth-century statue of the Madonna del Carmelo in a gilded wooden case.
Visiting
The church has been a parish since 1928. Opening and service times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
Beside the left-hand passage is a copy of the tombstone of Petra Castagna, niece of Pope Urban VII, who died in 1554 and was buried here: it is thanks to her that we know the first church already existed then.
