Description
The Church of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, also called Santa Caterina delle Donne, faces Piazza Pretoria and Piazza Bellini, in the heart of Palermo. It is part of a fourteenth-century Dominican monastery, and inside it is one of the most sumptuous churches of Palermitan Baroque.
Built between 1566 and 1596, it has a single nave with three chapels on each side and the transept with the dome. The exterior is sober, the surprise is inside: walls covered without a break by marmi mischi, that is, inlays of colored marble, gilded stuccoes and frescoes.
High up, on the dome, Vito D'Anna painted the Triumph of the Dominican Order in 1751. On the vault of the nave is the Triumph of Saint Catherine by Filippo Randazzo, with gilded stuccoes by Procopio Serpotta.
Don't miss the marble inlays at the base of the pilasters, with biblical episodes such as Jonah and the whale or the Sacrifice of Isaac, and the statue of Saint Catherine by Antonello Gagini, from 1534, in a chapel of the transept.
The choir, above the entrance, shows how the nuns lived: behind the grilles, high up, they followed Mass without being seen. The choir, held up by two twisted columns of red granite, has frescoes from 1769.
The monastery was founded thanks to bequests from Benvenuta Mastrangelo and her mother, and over time became reserved for the daughters of the aristocracy. The last nuns left in 2014, and the complex has been turned into a museum of monastic life, with cloister and refectory.
The cloister has a floor of blue eighteenth-century Neapolitan majolica tiles and a garden of fragrant plants; the refectory still keeps the long wooden tables on large red marble brackets.
And then the sweets. In 1841 the archbishop shut down the nuns' pastry shop because they were earning too much, against the rule of poverty. With those earnings the prioress had paid for the marmi mischi of the under-choir. Since 2017 you can once again buy sweets made with the ancient recipes of Palermo's monasteries.
Built between 1566 and 1596, it has a single nave with three chapels on each side and the transept with the dome. The exterior is sober, the surprise is inside: walls covered without a break by marmi mischi, that is, inlays of colored marble, gilded stuccoes and frescoes.
High up, on the dome, Vito D'Anna painted the Triumph of the Dominican Order in 1751. On the vault of the nave is the Triumph of Saint Catherine by Filippo Randazzo, with gilded stuccoes by Procopio Serpotta.
Don't miss the marble inlays at the base of the pilasters, with biblical episodes such as Jonah and the whale or the Sacrifice of Isaac, and the statue of Saint Catherine by Antonello Gagini, from 1534, in a chapel of the transept.
The choir, above the entrance, shows how the nuns lived: behind the grilles, high up, they followed Mass without being seen. The choir, held up by two twisted columns of red granite, has frescoes from 1769.
The monastery was founded thanks to bequests from Benvenuta Mastrangelo and her mother, and over time became reserved for the daughters of the aristocracy. The last nuns left in 2014, and the complex has been turned into a museum of monastic life, with cloister and refectory.
The cloister has a floor of blue eighteenth-century Neapolitan majolica tiles and a garden of fragrant plants; the refectory still keeps the long wooden tables on large red marble brackets.
And then the sweets. In 1841 the archbishop shut down the nuns' pastry shop because they were earning too much, against the rule of poverty. With those earnings the prioress had paid for the marmi mischi of the under-choir. Since 2017 you can once again buy sweets made with the ancient recipes of Palermo's monasteries.