Duomo di San Giorgio
The St. George's Cathedral is the mother church of the city of Modica, inserted in the List of World Heritage Site by UNESCO, symbol of Sicilian Baroque, which is the most spectacular architecture. The building is the final result of the reconstruction that took place after the disastrous earthquake that struck Modica in 1542, in 1613 and in 1693. Its construction was commissioned by Count Roger de Hauteville, from the Norman conquest of Sicily, around 1090. The imposing facade tower, which rises to a total height of 62 meters, was built from 1702 and completed in 1842. The facade was made by changing in the century. An imposing staircase, designed by Jesuit Francesco Di Marco, leads to the five portals that serve as a prelude to the five inner aisles. The basilica plant, a Latin cross, has three apses and is divided by 22 columns with Corinthian capitals. In the aisles it can admire numerous works of art: the grand pipe organ by Casimiro Allieri (1885-1888), a painting by the late Florentine Mannerist Filippo Paladini (1610), the "Nativity" of seventeenth-century Carlo Cane (1615-1688 ), the "Madonna della Neve", by Berrettaro Mancini's workshop (1511). On the altar at the end of one of the two aisles of the right, rests the Holy Ark, work in inlaid silver built in Venice in the fourteenth century, and donated to the church by the counts Chiaramonte. On the floor in front of the main altar, in 1895 the mathematician Armando Perini drew a sundial. Noteworthy, the grandiose altarpiece behind the main altar, made up of ten painted panels depicting scenes of the Holy Family and the Jesus's life. The altarpiece is traditionally attributed to Girolamo Alibrandi, known as "the Raphael of Sicily."
