The church of Santa Maria del Piliere stands in the hamlet of Acquaficara, south-east of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, a village the chronicler Filippo Di Benedetto believed to be of Saracen origin. It is dedicated to the Madonna del Piliere, or of the Pillar, a devotion that according to Flavio Biondo is very old and of Iberian origin, linked to Our Lady of the Pillar. On the same site there have been a first place of worship, a church of the Aragonese and Spanish period and the present church.
What to see
Of the old church the bell tower survives, which the sources date to 1134, in the time of Roger II: a square tower with two small Byzantine-style domes inside, perhaps also used for defence and as a lookout. The old church had a single nave with stucco and a carved wooden roof, an entrance facing north towards the sea near the bell tower and an apse with three small niches; it held a large painting, now lost, of a battle between Christians and Saracens.
The church keeps the marble statue of the Madonna del Piliere, of the Gagini school, from 1596, along with several paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Visiting
Badly damaged by the 1908 Messina earthquake, the church stayed closed for a long time; reduced to a ruin, it was demolished after 1960 and rebuilt on the same site, reopening in 1968. Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
The rebuilding reversed the orientation: where the apse once was there is now the entrance, and the façade faces east instead of towards the sea, while the old bell tower stayed where it was.
