Description
The Church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo, in the heart of the Kalsa, is a large Gothic church with no roof: soaring arches and, instead of a vault, the sky. It was never finished, and that is exactly what makes it one of the most evocative places in Palermo.
Inside, the first thing to see is the open-air nave, with its slender pointed arches and wide side chapels. The design combines the flamboyant Gothic of the windows, a large depressed arch and, on the north side, a small red dome in the Arab-Norman taste.
Under the arches, among the grass and a floor warped by time, you walk through a space that now hosts concerts and shows. Next to the church, the buildings of the old convent and former hospital house the Jazz Museum and the Brass Group school.
It was the jurist Jacopo de Basilicò who wanted it, and work began in 1509, entrusted to the Olivetan monks. The name comes from the "spasimo", the Virgin's anguish before Christ falling under the cross, and from a painting by Raphael.
For his family chapel, Basilicò had commissioned from Raphael the Christ Carrying the Cross, soon famous as the Spasimo of Sicily. Vasari called it a "marvelous work". In 1661, with the complicity of the viceroy, it was handed over to the King of Spain: it is in the Prado.
Meanwhile, the church had ended up inside the new walls built against the Turks, and the monks had left. In 1582 Tasso's Aminta was staged here, almost the city's first public theater; with the plague of 1624 it became a lazaretto.
Then it was a granary and a warehouse. In the mid-1700s the vault of the central nave collapsed and was never rebuilt. From 1886 to 1985 the complex was a hospital, and after the war the site ended up as a dump.
The ruin returned to the city on July 25, 1995, with a concert by Giovanni Sollima called, fittingly, "Spasimo". Since then, music and theater have been heard under its arches.
Inside, the first thing to see is the open-air nave, with its slender pointed arches and wide side chapels. The design combines the flamboyant Gothic of the windows, a large depressed arch and, on the north side, a small red dome in the Arab-Norman taste.
Under the arches, among the grass and a floor warped by time, you walk through a space that now hosts concerts and shows. Next to the church, the buildings of the old convent and former hospital house the Jazz Museum and the Brass Group school.
It was the jurist Jacopo de Basilicò who wanted it, and work began in 1509, entrusted to the Olivetan monks. The name comes from the "spasimo", the Virgin's anguish before Christ falling under the cross, and from a painting by Raphael.
For his family chapel, Basilicò had commissioned from Raphael the Christ Carrying the Cross, soon famous as the Spasimo of Sicily. Vasari called it a "marvelous work". In 1661, with the complicity of the viceroy, it was handed over to the King of Spain: it is in the Prado.
Meanwhile, the church had ended up inside the new walls built against the Turks, and the monks had left. In 1582 Tasso's Aminta was staged here, almost the city's first public theater; with the plague of 1624 it became a lazaretto.
Then it was a granary and a warehouse. In the mid-1700s the vault of the central nave collapsed and was never rebuilt. From 1886 to 1985 the complex was a hospital, and after the war the site ended up as a dump.
The ruin returned to the city on July 25, 1995, with a concert by Giovanni Sollima called, fittingly, "Spasimo". Since then, music and theater have been heard under its arches.