The little church of the Santissimo Salvatore stands at the foot of Monte Bonifato, on the road that climbs to the top, above Alcamo. It is mentioned in a document of 1379, and the historian Ignazio De Blasi considered it very old because its main door faces west and its chancel east, as in churches of remote times. In 1531 beside it stood the friary of the fathers of Santa Maria della Mercede, called of the Redemption because they devoted themselves to ransoming Christians held captive by the Turks; from 1621 they were followed by the Conventual Franciscans.
What to see
In 1639 the patronage belonged to the coopers, through whose devotion the Fridays of March were solemnly celebrated at the high altar. Around 1890 Father Salvatore Mannina built some rooms on the ruins of the friary, where he lived almost as a monk with some young men who wished to become priests. In 1942 the Franciscan Alessandro Vincenzo Petralia, an army chaplain, had the church restored to a design by the engineer Giuseppe Russo, and the façade was redone in Gothic style.
On the high altar is the canvas of the Santissimo Salvatore by Angelo Tamajo, a painter and photographer working in Alcamo, of 1898; on a wall a copy of Giuseppe Renda's Madonna del Riposo, made by Francesco di Giovanni in 1989; in the sacristy an oval of the Madonna del Riposo by Mariella Novara of 1982.
Visiting
After the 1968 earthquake the little church was entrusted to the parish priest of the Sacro Cuore and restored in the early eighties, work that saved it from a feared sale. Openings and services should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
From 1925 to 1942 the patronal feast was held on the first Sunday after 6 August: Masses, an afternoon procession, band, greasy poles and coloured paper lanterns, a midsummer fair for the neighbourhood and for those holidaying in the area.
