CASTLE OF PIETRAROSSA, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA LA VETERE AND CIMITERO MONUMENTALE
In the Middle Ages, the castle of Pietrarossa, called this way for the reddish colour of the bricks that cladded its three towers, stood out among all the castles that ensured protection to kings and nobles in the province of Caltanissetta. Probably built by the Arabs around the year 900 in a strategic position, on a limestone cliff on the edge of a gorge that overlooked the valley to the Salso River, it is one of the most important castles of Sicily for the events that occurred in the course of the centuries. After chasing out the Arabs, the Normans took possession of it with Count Roger; in 1150, Adelasia, granddaughter of King Roger, was buried in the chapel; later, the castle was given, under the Angevines, to a French castellan until 1282, when Sicily, after the Vespro revolt, went to the Aragonese. These were the years of the castle’s maximum splendour, chosen as the seat of three Sicilian General Parliaments. In 1407, the castle was granted to Matteo II Moncada by King Martino. It remained in the hands of the Moncadas, lords of Caltanissetta, until the suppression of feudalism. After the deadly earthquake of 1567, what is left of the ancient fortress belongs to the city of Caltanissetta. At the foot of the Castle’s remains, the Norman church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, called Santa Maria la Vetere from the 17th Century onwards to distinguish it from the new Chiesa Madre, called Santa Maria la Nova, offers a splendid access portal of sandstone in Gothic style. The church, with one nave, has been stripped of the furniture, of the paintings, of the wall decorations and of the altars, following the suppression of the religious Orders in 1866, since it was donated, in 1601, to the Friars Minor who built their convent next to it. Today, the church and the convent, restored and stripped of the superfetation added during the 150 years of improper use, have reopened to the public. Next to the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Castle of Pietrarossa, in 1878, the construction of the monumental cemetery of the Angels began on a clay hill that overlooks the valley of the southern Imera, which offers to those who wander through its winding paths a panoramic view of the Island’s south-central landscapes, with its clay hills and its gullies. One among the first monumental cemeteries in Italy, it hosts rich gentilitial chapels, with works by Francesco Biangardi and Michele Tripisciano, of which we must mention, among the marble sculptures, the Madonna sul trono con il bambino, a gypsum copy of which is kept in the city museum that bears the same name.
