A church, two earthquakes, a police station: what Catania has forgotten without knowing it

Not one, but a thousand and more hidden cities, sometimes overlapping, sometimes perfectly interlocked with one another, fitting together as if part of a primordial design from which it was impossible to escape.

Cities that emerge at times and only under the gaze of the attentive and cultured visitor, who sometimes manages, or believes he manages, certainly with considerable effort, to piece together the fragments and give coherence to a story made of almost invisible traces, legendary tales, enigmatic forms.

Fragments. The front of a sarcophagus, a holy water font, a medieval tombstone with heraldic coats of arms of the Alagona, the tempera on wood image of a praying Madonna take us back to the distant 1169.

A catastrophic earthquake sows destruction and fear. The survivors, guided by a divine voice, glimpse a glimmer, perhaps a light of courage in their souls, rediscover the image of a Madonna and in her honor erect a small temple, dedicated to Our Lady of Novaluce, in the understandable search for protection to continue their earthly experience.

Two centuries later, at the behest of Count Artale I Alagona, the church is enlarged and the Charterhouse is built.

But the area on which the complex stands, near the current cemetery, close to the Acquicella and Acquasanta streams, is unhealthy and causes the rapid spread of malaria.

January 11, 1693: yet another disastrous earthquake. The new church of Santa Maria di Novaluce and the attached convent, rebuilt elsewhere, in the area in front of the Teatro Massimo, are then ceded, in 1865, to the Intendenza di Finanza, in implementation of the subversive laws of the ecclesiastical assets promulgated after the unification of Italy and in 1926 demolished to build the Palazzo delle Finanze, now the headquarters of the State Police, "a palace that protects".

Comprehensive Institute
Teresa di Calcutta-Sanzio
Tremestieri Etneo (CT)