The diocesan Sanctuary of Maria Santissima della Cava is a religious building in Marsala, on via XIX luglio, dedicated to the Madonna della Cava, principal and special protector of the city; the church, with its adjoining old monastery, no longer inhabited, was the seat of the Discalced Augustinians.
What to see
The present complex includes the grotto with the ancient hypogeal church, the first one dedicated to the Madonna della Cava, with the old Augustinian monastery attached inside the grotto, and the new little church built between 1999 and 2000. In the hypogeal church, where the well in which the simulacrum was found lies, the high altar dates from the sixteenth century, is in marbles of various colours and has a copy of the statue of the Madonna della Cava. The two chapels are richly frescoed: in the right-hand one is a fresco of Saint Nicholas of Bari of 1571, by an unknown author, with the mitre, the golden chasuble, the right hand raised in blessing and the crozier in the left; in the left-hand one a sixteenth-century fresco of Saint Augustine handing the rule to kneeling monks and nuns, with the Annunciation, Saint Barbara, Saint Lucy, the archangel Raphael and the prophet Tobit. There is also the sarcophagus of Gerolamo Margio, patron of the decoration, with a bas-relief of foliage and two winged figures holding the family coat of arms. All the frescoes of the two chapels were restored in 2012 by the Lorenzo de' Medici restoration school of Florence.
The building of the sanctuary is tied to the legend according to which, around the eighth century, a statuette of the Virgin was buried and hidden under an enormous boulder, and in 1514 the Madonna appeared in a dream to Father Leonardo Savina, an Augustinian friar, urging him to dig in that quarry to bring her image back to light and to build a temple over it in her name; the simulacrum was found in 1518. The Madonna della Cava was elected and proclaimed principal patron of the city of Marsala in 1788. Over the years four churches have followed one another. The grotto, already shored up and closed in 1981, reopened after the works on 10 January 1997 and the crypt was reopened the following year.
Visiting
The sanctuary is on via XIX luglio, in Marsala, and is a rectory linked to the parish of Sant'Anna, on the same street. The sources consulted give no opening hours: these should be checked.
Our editors' tip
After the left-hand chapel look for the altar behind which a painting is visible, discovered in September 2017 by three local speleologists, shortly before the five-hundredth anniversary of the finding of the simulacrum: it shows a Madonna with the Child holding a globus cruciger, with below the old church of San Giovanni Battista al Boeo, the signature «Franciscu Ballaturi» and the date 1536. It was hidden by a second wall and was found with a probe camera inserted through a hole.
