AgrigentoLicata.
Its territory has been inhabited since the Palaeolithic
period, as testified by numerous archaeological
items in the Civic Museum. In 280 BC the tyrant
of Agrigento, Phintìas, founded here the
city of Phintìas, which gathered the inhabitants
of the destroyed city of Gela. In Roman times it
became one of the leading commercial centres in
Sicily, with a wheat-loader of vast capacity and
a well-provided port. The economy flourished also
in the Middle Ages. Licata was sacked by the Turks
in 1553, after which it recovered and spread NW
beyond the old town wall.
The Town Hall, a posthumous work by Ernesto Basile,
is in Piazza Progresso. The salon contains some
archaeological finds from the ancient Pinthìas,
some valuable 15th c. statues (including the Madonna
of the Map), and various paintings, among which
there is a canvas by Pietro d'Asaro of the Trinity
and Saints. The 17th c. Chiesa di San Domenico,
with its adjacent, now largely ruined convent, stands
in Corso Roma. The church has a single nave and
contains two fine canvas by Filippo Paladini representing
Trinity and Saints (1611) and St Antonius Abbe in
chair (1603). Not far away is the Chiesa and Convento
del Carmine, a magnificent building (1748) designed
by Giovanni Biagio Amico; the soaring façade
of the church is elegant and has intense colour
effects; the interior is elaborately decorated in
aulic style and has a canvas, Death of St Joseph,
by Giuseppe Felici, a painter of Trapani (1656-1734).
The convent, with its rich façade, is in
the same style as the church. The cloister still
contains two fine mullioned windows with two lights
and a 14th c. portal. Another group of monumental
buildings stands on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the
Chiesa and Convento di San Francesco, of 16th c.
origin and rebuilt in the 17thc. The façade
(1780), designed by Giovanni Biagio Amico, presents
a sumptuous display of decoratively jutting elements.
It has a single nave, where are of some interest
the wooden choir and the 18th c., the organ and
two restored paintings: the Baptism of Christ and
the Immaculate Conception, by Domenico Provenzani,
a painter of the near town Palma di Montechiaro
(1736-1794). Further on, we come to the Chiesa Madre,
Santa Maria la Nuova, originally built in the 16th
c.; the modifications it underwent in the 18th c.
completely changed its appearance. It has a nave
and two aisles; the frescoes of the vaults were
done by Raffaello Politi in the 19th c.; the Chapel
of the Crucifix is of particular interest, with
its fine decoration of wood carvings. Above the
altar is a 16th c. wooden crucifix. Also worth seeing
are the Chiesa della Carità (18th c.), the
convent of which is now the seat of the New Civic
Museum; the Chiesa di Sant'Angelo, in Piazza Sant'Angelo,
which contains a silver um with relics of the Saint;
and the Chiesa del SS. Salvatore (18th c.). The
Regional Archaeological Museum., in Via Dante, houses
local archaeological material, from prehistory to
the Greek age, and valuable 15th c. sculptures,
including the Madonna del Soccorso (1470), attributed
to Domenico Gagini. At the top of Sant'Angelo Hill,
just outside the town, after the restructured and
refurbished Chiesa di Santa Maria la Vetere, stands
the castle, a sturdy construction with a quadrangular
tower built in the first decades of the 17th c.
Here on the site of the ancient hill of Eknomos,
with its stupendous panoramic view of the surrounding
valleys, recent excavations have brought to light
traces of human settlements from prehistoric times
and a number of tombs.
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