The church of Santa Margherita is the church of Pozzillo, a seaside village of Acireale, dedicated to the village's patron saint, Saint Margaret of Antioch. It is the village's third church: the first was dedicated to Maria Stella del Mare, and the second, further inland, was built in 1786. When the sea advanced and destroyed the lava cliff, the inhabitants moved again, and in 1860 the present building was founded, on land donated by Pietro Carpinato.
What to see
The first stone was laid on 18 May 1862 and the work took ten years, slowed by a cholera epidemic, with the help of much of the population. Remembered in particular are the chaplain Caramma, who died of cholera, and the farm woman Caterina Strano, who knocked on every door asking for money or free labour, and after whom a street in the village is now named. In the early twentieth century the church, which had a single nave, gained its two side aisles, the stucco work and the marble of the altars; work ended in 1906 and the church was consecrated on 29 August that year. In 1928 the neo-Gothic façade was renewed, in an unusual red that makes it visible from afar.
The interior has three naves with apses. On the altars are the altarpiece of Saint Margaret painted in 1920 by Paolo Leonardi Vigo, with the patron saint above the village of Pozzillo, and two altarpieces by Francesco Mancini from the same year, the Immaculate Conception and the Madonna of the Rosary; the Saint Joseph is by Giuseppe and Francesco Vaccaro, from 1951. In the left apse is a seventeenth-century Crucifix in plaster and papier-mâché, from the older church, and the marble font dates from 1906.
Visiting
The church is the parish church of Pozzillo. Opening and service times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
The wooden statue of Saint Margaret, by Ignazio Castorina from the late eighteenth century, stays all year in the chapel above the high altar, which is opened only on the days of the feast.
