Real Duomo di Erice

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The Real Duomo has been repeatedly altered since the Middle Ages, leaving a building in which medieval architecture, Renaissance chapels and sculpture, 19th-century reconstruction and the collections of the church Treasury coexist. Several surviving features also preserve evidence of artistic connections between Erice, Palermo, Trapani and the wider Mediterranean.

The medieval church

The foundation of the Real Duomo is traditionally connected with Frederick of Aragon, who is said to have ordered the construction of a new principal church at Erice in the early 14th century. Later accounts give 1314 as the foundation date, while indulgences granted by Pope John XXII in 1329 indicate that construction was continuing by that time. The church was reportedly already in use in 1339, with its completion placed around 1372.

The medieval interior was very different from the church seen today. Historical descriptions record a basilican plan divided into three aisles by rows of tufa supports carrying pointed arches. The apse was decorated, while evidence also survives for painted decoration elsewhere in the building.

A document of 1452 records the commissioning of a fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin from a painter from Marsala. A surviving fragment depicting a musical angel has been associated with this decoration; later scholarship has identified influences derived from Catalan and Flemish painting.

The portico and late Gothic architecture

The portico in front of the main entrance was constructed in 1426. Vincenzo Scuderi cautiously associates it with Johannes de Medina, a craftsman documented at Erice during this period, although the attribution is not certain.

The church continued to acquire new chapels during the late Gothic and Renaissance periods. The most significant surviving Gothic example is the former Cappella di Ognissanti, now the Cappella del Crocefisso, dated 1512. Its complex five-key ribbed vault is one of the clearest surviving examples of the sophisticated stone-vaulting techniques introduced into western Sicily through connections with the western Mediterranean.

Further 16th-century chapels along the side of the church introduced Renaissance forms alongside this surviving Gothic fabric, creating a sequence that escaped the most radical changes made to the central interior during the 19th century.

Giuliano Mancino's marble cona

Dominating the apse is the monumental white-marble cona, or architectural altarpiece, attributed to the Renaissance sculptor Giuliano Mancino.

Writing in the 19th century, Gioacchino Di Marzo regarded it as the most notable and intact work he could securely identify as Mancino's. Its elaborate architectural structure contains a large central Madonna and Child surrounded by kneeling cherubs, with figures of Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint John the Baptist and Saint Julian in the adjoining niches. Below them appear the Apostles, Christ blessing, Doctors of the Church and royal saints.

The work therefore survives not simply as an individual sculpture but as a large Renaissance ensemble designed for the principal church of Erice.

The precise date requires some caution. Modern scholarship places the work in the early 16th century, but published sources consulted for the Atlas give conflicting dates of 1513 and 1523.

Laurana, Gagini and the Madonna of the Assumption

The history of another important marble Madonna in the church is more complicated.

Di Marzo records that Paolo di Gammicchia, archpriest of Erice, and Paolo Toscano, treasurer, commissioned the Dalmatian-born Renaissance sculptor Francesco Laurana to produce a Madonna for the Chiesa Madre. The statue was to resemble an earlier image of the Virgin in the Annunziata outside Trapani.

A further agreement of 1469 concerned a Madonna to be prepared in Palermo and completed at Erice. The surviving statue in the Real Duomo was consequently associated with Laurana for many years.

Later scholarship, however, has attributed the surviving Madonna Assunta to Domenico Gagini. The documentary commission to Laurana and the attribution of the surviving sculpture therefore need to be distinguished: evidence that Laurana was commissioned to make a Madonna for the church does not by itself establish that the statue surviving today is his work.

The 19th-century transformation

By the middle of the 19th century the medieval church required major intervention. The reconstruction undertaken between the 1850s and the reopening of the church in 1865 transformed the appearance of its central interior.

The new design adopted an elaborate Neo-Gothic language of clustered supports, pointed arches, ribs and decorative plasterwork. Rather than reconstructing the medieval church archaeologically, the work created a 19th-century interpretation of Gothic architecture while retaining the basic scale of the building and leaving important side chapels intact.

The intervention attracted criticism almost immediately. A 19th-century description complained that the extensive application of stucco made it difficult to distinguish “the ancient from the modern”, and criticised the imitation of surviving Gothic work in newly decorated chapels.

The authorship of the reconstruction is less straightforward than some modern accounts suggest. Sources associate Fra Francesco La Rocca with the execution of the reconstruction, while other historical material refers to a design originating in Naples and gives differing names for the architect. Until the specialist documentation resolves their respective roles, the project should not be attributed to a single designer without qualification.

The bell tower

The massive square tower beside the Real Duomo is physically separate from the church and has the austere appearance of a defensive structure. Its precise origins are uncertain.

A local historical tradition places its construction as a watchtower around the period of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, before or during the development of the neighbouring church. Its position near one of the principal approaches to the medieval town would have provided extensive observation over the surrounding territory.

The tower is divided internally into three levels with barrel-vaulted rooms and mullioned windows. These rooms were later used as prisons under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Alterations eventually blocked the original internal staircase, which climbs through straight flights before continuing towards the summit. The staircase was rediscovered and reopened during restoration and consolidation work in 1954.

Claims sometimes repeated that the tower originated during the Punic Wars are not supported by the historical research used for this article and should be treated separately from the documented medieval history of the complex.

The Treasury and MEMS

The Real Duomo also preserves a substantial collection of sacred art. Its Treasury was developed as a museum display of sculpture, silverwork, liturgical vessels, textiles and other objects connected with the religious institutions of Erice, and now forms part of the diocesan MEMS – Museo Erice La Montagna del Signore.

Among its most important documented objects is the monumental silver ostensorio made in 1602 by Pietro Lazzara. Its architectural structure contains figures of the four Latin Fathers of the Church and an upper tempietto crowned by the Assumption. The work originally incorporated fourteen small sculptures.

The ostensorio was stolen on 16 August 1992 and recovered in November 1997, but several figures had disappeared, including Saints Peter, Paul and Albert the Carmelite, a number of angels and the Risen Christ originally placed at its summit. Eight of the fourteen statuettes survive today. It is now preserved in the Museo del Tesoro of the Real Duomo.