The church of the Immaculate Conception stands at the end of via Regina Margherita, in the quarter of the same name in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, at the foot of the small hill with the Basilian complex. It was wanted by the confraternity of the Virgin Mary Immaculate, founded in 1702, which until then met in the oratory of Gesù e Maria by the old duomo of San Sebastiano: in 1750 the archbishop of Messina, Tommaso Moncada, allowed the members to build a church of their own, completed at the end of the eighteenth century.
What to see
The façade has twin bell towers, like other churches in the town. The interior has a single nave with one altar on each side: on the right that of Saint Joseph with the Child, on the left that of the Ecce Homo, with the 1921 papier-mâché statue by Matteo Trovato carried in procession in Holy Week. On the high altar is the eighteenth-century statue of the Immaculate Virgin, beneath a sunburst with the stucco dove of the Holy Spirit.
The church keeps a cycle of six seventeenth-century oval paintings of the Holy Family, the Presentation in the Temple, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Circumcision and the Ascension. The sacristy holds two Good Friday floats, the Deposition from the Cross and the Pietà.
Visiting
The church was restored between 2000 and 2002, and in 2009 investigations of its underground spaces began. On 8 December the feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated with a novena and procession, and from 13 to 24 December the Christmas novena. Times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
Beneath the church are two crypts, one under the high altar, and a putridarium with twenty-six niches, originally used for the burial of children.
