Description
The Basilica of La Magione, or Santissima Trinità del Cancelliere, is one of the oldest churches in Palermo, on the edge of the Kalsa. With its pointed arches and interlaced apses it is a distinctive example of Arab-Norman art, reached through a Baroque portal and a garden.
It was the last church built under the Normans. The facade has three pointed portals, the two side ones smaller, and a row of single-light windows. Higher up, three slender windows appear in the pediment, the central one in line with the entrance.
On the central apse, the interlaced arches, typical of the period, stand out. Inside, eight columns and six arches lead toward the presbytery, and in the middle of the nave hangs a twelfth-century crucifix.
In the left aisle is the stone cross with the emblem of the Teutonic Knights, from the fifteenth century, next to the sarcophagus of Francesco Perdicaro by Vincenzo Gagini, dated 1567. In the presbytery, a tabernacle of the Gagini school from 1528.
The complex also has a cloister, with its portico and a Renaissance fresco of the Madonna delle Grazie, and the ante-oratory of Santa Cecilia, where a mullioned window, perhaps from the ninth century, with an Arabic inscription is preserved.
The story begins with a funeral. In February 1194 King Tancred, the last of the Hautevilles, asked to be buried here, next to his son Roger. Less than a year later, Sicily's new master, Henry VI of Swabia, had both kings dug up.
Stripped of their royal insignia, they were beheaded and thrown into a mass grave. Then the emperor drove out the Cistercian monks, who were hostile to him, and in 1197 handed the church to the Teutonic Knights, who held it until 1492.
The church was their "mansio," that is, their main house in Sicily: hence the name everyone uses, la Magione. In the Baroque era it was covered in plaster, and the restorations between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave it back its medieval look.
It was the last church built under the Normans. The facade has three pointed portals, the two side ones smaller, and a row of single-light windows. Higher up, three slender windows appear in the pediment, the central one in line with the entrance.
On the central apse, the interlaced arches, typical of the period, stand out. Inside, eight columns and six arches lead toward the presbytery, and in the middle of the nave hangs a twelfth-century crucifix.
In the left aisle is the stone cross with the emblem of the Teutonic Knights, from the fifteenth century, next to the sarcophagus of Francesco Perdicaro by Vincenzo Gagini, dated 1567. In the presbytery, a tabernacle of the Gagini school from 1528.
The complex also has a cloister, with its portico and a Renaissance fresco of the Madonna delle Grazie, and the ante-oratory of Santa Cecilia, where a mullioned window, perhaps from the ninth century, with an Arabic inscription is preserved.
The story begins with a funeral. In February 1194 King Tancred, the last of the Hautevilles, asked to be buried here, next to his son Roger. Less than a year later, Sicily's new master, Henry VI of Swabia, had both kings dug up.
Stripped of their royal insignia, they were beheaded and thrown into a mass grave. Then the emperor drove out the Cistercian monks, who were hostile to him, and in 1197 handed the church to the Teutonic Knights, who held it until 1492.
The church was their "mansio," that is, their main house in Sicily: hence the name everyone uses, la Magione. In the Baroque era it was covered in plaster, and the restorations between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave it back its medieval look.