Statua di Santa Rosalia

At the centre of the forecourt before Palermo Cathedral stands the Statua di Santa Rosalia, which Vincenzo Vitaliano carved in 1744. She is the city's patron saint, shown in the act of driving out the plague. The space around her, the planum ecclesiae, took shape in 1195, when an old cemetery became a piazza.

Don Ignazio Sebastiano Gravina, Prince of Palagonia, commissioned the work to mark the city's deliverance from plague. It replaced a fountain, the Fontana dei Tre Vecchioni, that had held the centre of the square. Sixteenth-century brick paving gave the forecourt the name Piano dei Cavalieri, a gathering ground for knights. A stone balustrade followed in the seventeenth century, carrying statues of the city's patron saints made between 1655 and 1673. A new one in Billiemi stone took over in 1753, and more saints joined the pillars at the entrances. The same ground has served civic life too. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, great platforms rose here for inquisitors and city leaders during public acts of faith. From 1515 into the nineteenth century, the Fiera di Santa Cristina filled the space with stalls and merchants for fifteen days.

The paving under your feet dates to 2000, marble and river pebbles set in paths that steer you toward the cathedral. Look for her there: one woman against the plague, in the square where Palermo has gathered for centuries.