The abbey of Santa Maria la Scala is an old monastery in Paternò, now in ruins, in the south-eastern part of the territory, near the Scala Vecchia-Palazzolo quarter. It began in Norman times as a Greek-rite Basilian monastery, outside the old town, east of the hill, out of sight of the sea to be less exposed to pirates; according to the sources it is one of the few Greek monasteries founded in Sicily after the end of Byzantine rule, although the monks had to obey the Latin abbot appointed by the Norman kings, as a charter of 1170 shows.
What to see
Under William I the monastery passed to the Latin rite, and over the centuries it received land, houses, churches and mills: in 1170 William II gave the hermit Stephen the hamlet of Resinecchi, near Lentini, and in 1182 grazing rights on crown land. In 1343 Queen Eleanor of Anjou endowed it with new houses and property, but under the Aragonese it declined: the last Greek monk, Giacomo, left in 1360, and in 1376 the Carthusians settled here. In 1468 it was joined to the abbey of Santa Maria di Nuovaluce in Catania and the Discalced Augustinians arrived, staying until 1785; the friary was suppressed in 1833 and passed to the State after the laws of 1866.
Few remains survive today: old lava stone walls with a pointed-arch doorway and a few other structures with barrel vaults, inside a private building. Many tombs of Basilian and Augustinian monks have been looted by illegal diggers; until 1993 storerooms, rooms and a wine press of the old friary could still be made out.
Visiting
The remains are on private property: whether they can be seen should be checked beforehand.
Our editors' tip
The abbey was also known as the «conventaccio», and other accounts describe the church's frescoed apse, with two side niches and one in the middle.
