Description
The Church of San Francesco all'Immacolata, on Viale Boccetta in Messina, is a large Gothic church founded in 1254, the first of the Franciscan order in Sicily. In size it is the city's second church after the cathedral: a medieval church that has survived fires, earthquakes and bombs.
The highlight is outside, at the back: the three crenellated apses with their mighty buttresses, which stayed standing even after the 1908 earthquake. They are the very ones Antonello da Messina painted in the background of his Dead Christ Supported by Three Angels, now in the Museo Correr in Venice.
On the façade the rose window and the portals are original: recovered intact from the rubble, they were put back during the rebuilding. The rest of the church was also rebuilt between 1926 and 1928 reusing the fallen stones, with the plan and style of the old one, which has an almost northern feel.
Inside, in a chapel on the left, the silver-clad statue of the Immaculate, the work of 17th-century Messina craftsmen, gives the church its second name. In the small square in front stands the bronze Saint Francis by Antonio Bonfiglio, from 1965.
Tradition has it that the church was founded by three noblewomen of Messina, Violante Palizzi, Eleonora da Procida and Beatrice Belfiore, who are buried here. Even earlier, in 1221, Saint Anthony of Padua had stayed at the friars' convent after a shipwreck on the Sicilian coast.
It was a royal chapel, under the protection of the Aragonese kings of Sicily. It was right as he left a ceremony in this church, in 1370, that King Frederick IV, son of Elisabeth of Carinthia and paternal grandson of King Frederick III, survived an assassination attempt. He was later buried here with his mother, in a Roman sarcophagus carved with the Rape of Proserpina.
In 1884 a fire destroyed the interior and the wooden roof, and only the statues of Saint Francis, the Immaculate and Saint Anthony were saved from the flames. Twenty-four years later came the earthquake.
The highlight is outside, at the back: the three crenellated apses with their mighty buttresses, which stayed standing even after the 1908 earthquake. They are the very ones Antonello da Messina painted in the background of his Dead Christ Supported by Three Angels, now in the Museo Correr in Venice.
On the façade the rose window and the portals are original: recovered intact from the rubble, they were put back during the rebuilding. The rest of the church was also rebuilt between 1926 and 1928 reusing the fallen stones, with the plan and style of the old one, which has an almost northern feel.
Inside, in a chapel on the left, the silver-clad statue of the Immaculate, the work of 17th-century Messina craftsmen, gives the church its second name. In the small square in front stands the bronze Saint Francis by Antonio Bonfiglio, from 1965.
Tradition has it that the church was founded by three noblewomen of Messina, Violante Palizzi, Eleonora da Procida and Beatrice Belfiore, who are buried here. Even earlier, in 1221, Saint Anthony of Padua had stayed at the friars' convent after a shipwreck on the Sicilian coast.
It was a royal chapel, under the protection of the Aragonese kings of Sicily. It was right as he left a ceremony in this church, in 1370, that King Frederick IV, son of Elisabeth of Carinthia and paternal grandson of King Frederick III, survived an assassination attempt. He was later buried here with his mother, in a Roman sarcophagus carved with the Rape of Proserpina.
In 1884 a fire destroyed the interior and the wooden roof, and only the statues of Saint Francis, the Immaculate and Saint Anthony were saved from the flames. Twenty-four years later came the earthquake.