Church of St Margaret

The church of Santa Margherita, better known as the Badia Vecchia (Old Abbey) or church of San Giovanni di Dio, stood beside the enclosed women's monastery of the Benedictine Order. The nuns and their abbess moved here around 1450, after leaving the monastery in the ancient hamlet of Saperi, today's San Pietro. The monastery appears to have been founded between 1325 and 1330 at the behest of Queen Elisabeth of Carinthia, wife of Peter II (1337-1342). Nothing remains of the earlier medieval structure but its memory: the building, altered several times, now bears Neoclassical decoration.

The church has a single central hall with a large chapel at the far end and side altars. It is entered through a three-arched under-choir, surmounted by a remarkably rich and elegant wrought-iron grille. The ceiling is decorated with tempera paintings set within nine panels, made by Francesco La Farina (Palermo, 1778-1837) in the early 19th century.

Inside this splendid building one may admire, starting from the right, the Madonna of the Rosary of 1807 signed by the painter Salvatore Bulgarello, and the canvas depicting Saint Benedict enthroned between Saints Maurus and Placidus, also signed by Giuseppe Salerno (Gangi, 1573-1633). On the left-hand side stands the statue of Saint Margaret, with her typical iconographic attributes - the book and the coiled tail of the dragon - attributed to Domenico Gagini and his workshop and made at the end of the 15th century. Finally, note the surviving portions of the original majolica floor, made by the Burgio tile-maker Giuseppe Savia in 1658.