Santa Maria dello Spasimo

Santa Maria dello Spasimo is the most unusual sight in Palermo: an unfinished, roofless Gothic church in the Kalsa, now used as an open-air venue for jazz, exhibitions, and contemporary performances. The Gothic nave is intact, walls and rib vaults reaching almost to where the roof should be, with sky open above the central crossing.

Trees grow inside, palms in the side chapels. The setting is genuinely moving — a few minutes' walk from the noisy Foro Italico, but feeling like a clearing in a private wood. Free entry, open most daylight hours. Check the cultural programme for evening events.

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A story
The church was begun in 1509 but never finished. Raphael painted a Spasimo di Sicilia (Christ Falling on the Road to Calvary) for the high altar around 1517 — the altarpiece was sold to the Spanish king in 1661 and is now in the Prado. The building itself was used as a plague hospital, a granary, a barracks, and finally a hospital again before being abandoned to ruin in the 20th century.

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