The friary was founded in 1556 and almost entirely destroyed by the earthquake of 1693, the one that flattened the whole of south-eastern Sicily. It was rebuilt and enlarged with the offerings of the faithful and the money of the local lords, and the work ended only in 1748: half a century to put back on its feet a house of poor friars.
What to see
The complex has the simple structure the order gave itself: a single-nave church, a small cloister, the cells, the service rooms. As in many Capuchin friaries the wooden furnishings were carved by the friars themselves, and the plainness of the materials is part of the rule, not of a lack of means.
For a long time the novitiate was here: for a period it was the only one in the whole of Sicily, and young men came to it from Naples, Bari and Malta. In the nineteen-sixties theology was taught here, and the friary is still a house of formation, not a museum: whoever enters is entering a place where people live.
Visiting
The friary is just outside Sortino, on the road going down towards the Anapo valley, an hour by car from Syracuse; the church is open, the rest of the complex is visited only with the friars' consent. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
The property includes a wood, which the Capuchins call the selva. It was part of the friary because the rule asked them to provide their own timber and food; when the state confiscated the friary, in the nineteenth century, it confiscated the trees as well, and when the friars bought it back they bought those back too. Go and walk in it.