The Scalinata di Santa Maria del Monte (Staircase of St. Mary of the Mountain) is by nature a very scenic architectural element within the city of Caltagirone. Throughout May, on the occasion of the Infiorata for the festivities of the Madonna dei Conadomini, it can be seen completely adorned with t...

The dome was built after the earthquake of 1693. The structure is a segmental dome, has a single layer, and was once covered with square glazed terracotta tiles, which were removed during the last restoration in 2008. It is punctuated by double ribs converging in the lantern, which has a small cro...

The composite order is an architectural order characterised by very slender proportions and sumptuous decorations. It comes from the union of Ionic and Corinthian orders....

Domenico Gagini was born in the Canton of Ticino, in Bissone, in the 1430s. He began working as a sculptor in Genoa, where he built and decorated the chapel of San Giovanni Battista (St. John the Baptist) in Genoa Cathedral. Later he moved to Southern Italy, first to Campania then to Sicily, impo...

A pendentive is an architectural element that can be positioned between the dome and the underlying structures that support it. It also indicates the portion of the front wall between the arches and the horizontal plane formed by the wall, for example in the naves of a church. In churches it is ...

A Greek cross is one of the possible shapes of a building plan. The Greek cross is a cross with four arms of equal size that cross at a right angle....

The word "Doric" indicates a type of capital and base (which is square and linear in the case of the Doric order) that characterises the pilaster, an architectural element incorporated in the wall, required to support a building's structure. It protrudes only very slightly from the wall surface....

A Venetian (or Serlian) window is an architectural element composed of a round arch flanked by two identical openings on which rests an architrave; between the arch and the two openings there are two columns. It is found in Roman architecture, especially in the eastern provinces, and in Byzantine ...

The Staircase of St. Mary of the Mountain, also known as the Staircase of St. James, weaves between two tightly packed housing terraces. It was built in the first decade of the seventeenth century to create a direct connection between the old quarter located in the lower part of Caltagirone and th...

Historical records about the foundation of the church in the 12th century include one by Catania-born abbot Vito M. Amico, who lived in the 18th century: "Under the fortress, on the highest point of the hill, is the main sacred church dedicated to the Beata Vergine Assunta, commonly known as the chu...