The present-day church

Built between the late 15th and early 16th centuries on the edge of the Cala, the old harbour of Palermo, and opening up on the opposite side on the Marina area, the Santa Maria della Catena church still today affords an extremely charming setting and probably also constitutes the most refined example of a happy period for architecture in the city. Its name is linked to the chain that closed off the entrance to the harbour for defence. On a base which is raised above the level of the streets that delimit it, pointing to an older more uneven orography than the present one, the church is made up of the juxtaposition of volumes of different heights staggered downwards: the apses and the tribune, the long area of the nave and aisles, and the access portico. The present flight of steps is the fruit of transformations and reductions in height effected in the 19th century. The basilical plan supported by columns (some of them bare but with modern capitals) ends him with a high sanctuary with a double transept, reminiscent, from the planimetric point of view, of traditional solutions on the island. The arches in the nave follow a reduced profile, while, in a way which is anomalous for buildings in the city and in comparison to the local tradition, the ceilings are entirely real. Particularly refined are the bases of the columns in linking together the sanctuary and the main room, inspired by geometries based on the rotation of squares, a solution deriving from indications by Matthes Roriczer and that we also find in a splendid base preserved at Palazzo Abatellis and coming from the building yard of Santissimo Salvatore in Palermo. The exterior also presents themes worthy of attention. The portico with reduced arches and little corner towers appears inspired by the one done in the 1520s on the south side of Palermo Cathedral, but for the use of little corner towers it also harks back to the mercantile loggia at Palma de Majorca. Of particular geometric refinement are the arches of the portico with multiple moulding. The division of the side wall with a series of pseudo-responds with bases evokes a Gothic “order”, perhaps mediated by classicising perspective arrangements. Portals in white marble with a classicising design and certainly done by Tuscan or Lombard marble workers are also to be seen in the main front and in the one looking towards the harbour. No less uninhibited (from a strictly stylistic point of view) is the choice made in the crowning: a repeated series of panels with flamboyant designs superimposed on volutes and a panel with floral decorations, certainly taken from “old-style” repertoires.” Despite these pseudo-Italian “quotations”, the definition of the surfaces entirely in bare stone and the repetition of some themes (responds with offsets, cyma bases, the openwork of the crowning) make the complex consistent and unitary. Demonstrating the importance of the building, numerous partial elements of the Catena church (like the use of pseudo-responds or the ribbed ceilings) were copied in no end of other churches in Palermo.