Church of St Mary Lo Piano

The year the church was built is unknown, but it is certain that it already existed in 1301 under the name of Santa Maria del Soccorso.

The main facade, completely renewed in 1770, is articulated by the portal and by pilaster strips, both in squared calcarenite stone, supporting a cornice crowned by a splendid bell gable.

The side portal, in Romanesque style, has a round arch with stone corner blocks, enriched at the top by a bas-relief depicting the Virgin Mary.

The south front of the building, by contrast, is plain, pierced by two squared openings. The interior of the church has a single nave. The roof is formed of wooden trusses and Sicilian barrel tiles laid in a double course (channel and cover tiles). The distinctive feature and value of the roof lies precisely in those trusses, made of fir of the now almost extinct species abies nebrodensis, one of the most precious endemic plants of the Madonie Park, a relic of the last ice age that survives in only a handful of specimens in the territory of Polizzi Generosa itself. The roof is therefore the only demonstration of the structural use of this species of fir. The trusses are also decorated with geometric designs and paintings of monsters, by now almost entirely erased by the decay of time. The main altar is enriched with bas-reliefs in pure gold on a cobalt ground. The church was also important in civil and administrative terms, as it was the seat of the town senate that Polizzi was entitled to as a free city. The basement of the building also served as a crypt for burials until 1804.