//
Dedicated to the hermit saint of Noblac, the church was built in the mid-16th century as the seat of a brotherhood. Subsequently the Brancifortes wanted to add a cenoby to it to transfer the Reformed Augustinian friars of the Sicilian Centorbina Congregation who until then were housed in a small convent outside the city (today called the Conventazzu). The works were completed in 1630 and the following year the friars moved there. The church and convent were not damaged by the earthquake of 1693. However, following the suppression of ecclesiastical bodies in 1866, the church went into disuse (also due to the lowering of the street level which made access to it impracticable), while the premises of the convent were used as public schools until the 1950s. The entire complex is now in ruins. Of the church, the 17th-century stuccos and the remains of the high altar inside are barely visible. Outside, the front of the entrance door has a frieze with the monogram of Christ inscribed in a sun with twelve rays and an epigraph with the dedication to the titular saint dated 1638. There was a beautiful 17th-century statue depicting San Leonardo Abate, a refined alabaster Madonna of Trapani from the 1400s and numerous other works of art (canvases, marbles and sacred furnishings) now exhibited at the San Nicolò Museum. A papier-mâché statue of Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine) was modified to represent the more popular Saint Rita (Augustinian nun) and placed in the mother church of San Nicola.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Built in the 18th century, it has a very rich telamon portal. It is one of the most beautiful examples of post-earthquake aristocratic building.
formerly Caruso della Sanzà and Rossitto
It was built in the 18th century and occupies an entire block. It has six balconies with rich masked corbels and festoons in the pilasters. It is enriched by a luxuriant garden which is now surrounded by a wall. It belonged to the noble Caruso family, whose main branch died out at the end of the 18th century, with the baron Don Antonino Caruso who died childless; while the secondary branch in the early years of the 19th century, with Donna Marianna Caruso-Scuderi, married to Antonino Malgioglio and Cardaci di Ramacca.
ex Constantine, ex Reforgiato di Linziti
Its construction was completed in 1771, and has six balconies with late Baroque frames and corbels. Wanted by Baron Reforgiato of Linziti, it later passed to the Costantino family and then to the Iatrini. It was used until the 1960s as the seat of the Tax Agency and then as a religious house. Today it is owned by the parish of S. Maria della Stella.
Chiesa del Santissimo Sacramento al Circolo
Votive church built in the second decade of the 18th century, based on a project by the Militellese architect Don Antonino Scirè Giarro, it was intended for the perpetual exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. It has a singular carved Baroque facade with a concave Borrominian profile, surmounted by a bell loggia with a three-light fan profile. Inside, decorated with elegant stuccoes in the late Baroque style, it preserves the valuable statue with its fercolo of Sant'Antonio Abate in the chair of 1575, the work of the Bivonese sculptor Antonio De Mauro, coming from the church of S. Antonio Abate. Of particular interest is the predella of the statue of the saint with scenes from his life depicted in relief. A tombstone from 1724 (today exhibited in the Treasury of S. Maria della Stella) remembers the spouses Alfio Palermo and Fortunata of the barons Lamia, benefactors of the church, buried here. The church also has two interesting frescoes, on the pillars of the large chapel of the presbytery, depicting the coat of arms of the Bourbons of Naples and Sicily in the two different elaborations, of Charles III and Ferdinand III of Sicily.
ex Reforgiato
It is a large building that closes off Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II for an entire side. In addition to the size, this eighteenth-century building is characterized by the remarkable Baroque carvings of the balconies and the large ashlar portal surmounted by the noble coat of arms.
ex Tinnirello, ex Interlandi di Bellaprima
It dates back to the 17th-18th centuries. It has an elegant carved window, in Mannerist style, on whose tympanum there is a marble heraldic coat of arms. It first belonged to the Calatina family of the Interlandi princes of Bellaprima (the parish priest of San Nicola don Lorenzo Interlandi lived there), in the first half of the 18th century it passed to the illustrious Tinnirello family from Militello who lived there until 1921, hosting the ground floor homonymous pharmacy, and finally to the Oliva family.