Overview
The church of Santa Maria Maddalena or chiesa madre is the main church in Ciminna. Mainly Baroque in taste, it contains valuable works of local art. The church was used as a location to shoot part of the film The Leopard by Luchino Visconti. The church existed as early as 1230, built when the historic nucleus of Ciminna was born: according to tradition, it was annexed to the castle. It is conceivable that it was destroyed during an Angevin raid that, on 26 June 1326, devastated the countryside and the town. Matteo Sclafani, Lord of Ciminna, rebuilt a tower-palace nearby and, in 1333, ordered the construction of a new church, dedicated to San Giovanni Battista. Archival sources state that it was founded in 1350, specifying that it had the main altar towards the north and was dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. Remains of the crypt and the apsidal area have been received from this fourteenth-century church. Rebuilt after elevation to a parish on the area of the previous one, the apse faces east. The oldest of the structures is the bell tower of 1519: an epigraph fixed its completion in 1550, the year in which the main bell was cast. Inspired by Norman buildings, it preserves the iconographic scheme of the church of Santo Spirito in Palermo. The solidity of those buildings is recalled in the apsidal area with its characteristic asymmetries, while the hall, covered by a flat ceiling (destroyed in 1970) and the façade, had Gothic elements derived from 15th-century Palermo. The 1693 earthquake damaged the facade, remodeled with inserts that recall the architectural lexicon of Paolo Amato. The interior, covered by decorative stuccoes in the 18th century, took on a Baroque appearance. The red tone of the façade plaster, originally white, dates back to the same period.
