CHURCH OF S. GIUSEPPE
The church is located in Piazza Pola (the ancient Piazza Maggiore) on the site where the church of S. Tommaso stood before the earthquake of 1693. The current church of San Giuseppe was built in the second half of the 700th century on the initiative of the nuns of the adjacent Monastery of San Benedetto. Some scholars of the past, on the basis of some similarities between the façade of the church of S. Giuseppe and those of S. Giorgio in Ragusa and of S. Domenico and del Carmine in Noto, have attributed the church to the work of Rosario Gagliardi; Paolo Nifosì, on the other hand, on the basis of the fact that at the time of the beginning of the works Gagliardi was no longer active having signed the power of attorney general to his son-in-law Vincenzo Sinatra in 1762, excludes Gagliardi attributing the church to Fra Alberto Maria di S. Giovanni Battista for the particularity of some architectural details. The façade, rich in carvings and sculptures, presents in the first order four Corinthian columns and an entrance portal surmounted by a frieze with plant motifs and flanked by the statues of Sant'Agostino and S. Gregorio; in the extreme sections, however, you can admire the statues of Saints Gertrude and Scholastica. The second order has a large window with a semicircular arch and a “goose breast” wrought iron grate; it is connected to the first order by large scrolls flanked by the statues of San Benedetto and San Mauro.
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