Saint Domenico Square is made of gold and sky.

 

It is one of the most beautiful and at the same time simple attractions in the busy city centre of Palermo: a church observing a column, inside a square open on several sides.

Noisy, folkloristic and always lively streets converge here, even at night; I am talking about via Roma, via dei Maccheronai and via Giovanni Meli.

We are right in the centre, in the historic district of La Loggia, which extends to the port and contains timeless beauties.

In the square, which became aforementioned in the second half of the 1600s, there are monuments of particular interest: the baroque church of Saint Domenico and the column of the Immaculate Conception.

Let's start from the church from which the square takes its name: the building erected between the 14th and 15th centuries, it has undergone several renovations and the current configuration dates back to the Spanish era, while the baroque facade we can see today is from the first half of the 1700s.

Time and renovations have never really affected the beauty of the building and its role has been focal for several eras. Today it is still one of the most important churches in the city, to all effects, a pantheon of renowned Sicilians, where, among others, where held the funeral of magistrate Giovanni Falcone and his wife Francesca Morvillo, killed by the mafia in May 1992 together with their security detail.

The column of the Immaculate Conception is instead a much more recent work than the church because it was erected in 1728 to fill the square following the expansion works, which also included the intersection with Via Roma to give life to the structural form we know today (before the square was in fact closed on that side).

Built in Baroque style too, is characterized by the presence of bronze statues in its lower part, while at its peak there is the Virgin Mary statue erected to the perfect height to be visible from the altar of the church. A lighthouse during religious celebrations.

 

Now, as I said before, the square also lodges the entrance to the Vucciria market and the goldsmiths and silversmiths' district. Behind and on the sides of this so representative religious building, the beating heart of the city's economy pulsates, with one of its historic markets per excellence, which is still operative every day of the year, branching out along colourful and noisy streets (Vucciria means, in fact, confusion, din).

Streets that take their name and smell from the professions that have lived there for all these centuries; the proximity to the sea is in fact a great advantage that has made this market a strategic node in history, a great passage point for merchants during different eras.

Today the market remains chaotic and noisy, full of street vendors who leave space to new voices in the evening, when the neighbourhood filled up with nightlife and other colours, different from those of the day that shine under the sun.

 

San Domenico Square is made of gold and sky.

 

Made of gold because it has the colour of this precious metal: these are just some bands of this church which is baroque, but anyway simple and indeed largely white. However, its "inserts" (a decidedly incorrect word) are the protagonists and illuminates the entire square with a radiating light. The paved floor, typically grey, is also yellow coloured when reflects that glow that always warms it. And in the evening, when the street lamps become spheres, like many dim stars that in their tiredness whisper "we can't turn you off" and make the square even more beautiful, giving it a magical atmosphere.

 

San Domenico Square is made of gold and sky.

 

Made of sky because it is completely open and encourages you to look up, towards the tip of its Madonna. Made of sky because is the predominant element when you do not see the sea, even if you perceive its vicinity and odour.