Piazza San Francesco il Chiostro di Palazzo Chiaramonte

Arriving in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, what is still today Piazza San Francesco for the people of Enna, you can admire the magnificent palace once owned by the Chiaramonte family.

The arrival in the city of the Franciscan friars to whom the sovereign himself gave the use of a plot of land in the Janniscuru area is due to the evangelical work of Frederick III of Aragon, the first settlement nucleus of the friars who built the church dedicated to the Spirit there. Santo and their convent. Thanks to their evangelizing work and their assiduous presence in the urban fabric, after the tensions created in Sicily over the succession to the throne, they managed to obtain the palaces of Andrea Chiaramonte and Scaloro degli Uberti from King Martin in 1393. The friars renovated the palace, adapting it to monastic needs and building a church dedicated primarily to St. Andrew and then to the Immaculate Conception.

The church has a single nave with high and unadorned walls, has a frescoed apse with scenes from the life of San Antonio da Padua crowned by the glorification of San Francesco and San Antonio embellished with a 17th century wooden choir. At the center of the triumphal arch hangs a cross attributed to Pietro Ruzzolone da Palermo (1484-1526) and painted on both sides, crowned by the side chapels that open on the sides of the nave in which, among the works we recognize a triptych Crucifix, the three canvases by the Enna painter Francesco Ciotti which represent: “the Forgiveness of Assisi”, “the Assumption of the Virgin” and a “Nativity”, the canvas of the “Virgin crowned by the Angels and venerated by the Franciscan Saints Clare and Agnes and the panel by Simone Wobreck reproducing “The Adoration of the Magi”.

The story of Saint Francis is narrated by frescoes by Giovan Battista Bruno (17th century) while the statue of the Immaculate Conception is attributed to the Bagnasco workshop. The church is the seat of the Confraternity of Maria SS. Immacolata was born in 1754 through the merger of the “Delli Cordigeri” brotherhoods (1400) and the College of Sant’Orsola (1613). Next to the Church stands the Bell Tower undoubtedly dating back to a previous era and which can also be included in the defensive circuit of the city, which today appears to us in forms that tend from Gothic to Renaissance according to the canons dictated in the renovation work dating back to 1485. The tower is divided into three floors and what today appears as a ground floor placed too high compared to today's walking level, in reality owes its position to the continuous excavations that have taken place over the years which have led to the inaccessibility of the front door of the church and the demolition of the access ladder.

When the square was built, a huge excavation was carried out which significantly lowered the level of the building, the entrance of which remains visible and almost inconceivable today. So to access the church, the basement was dug, creating caves and an entrance hall that leads to an internal staircase that leads to the first floor of the building where the church is located. It is also possible to access the Church from an entrance located in the cloister of the convent which can be reached by climbing the stairs located in the rear part. The cloister has lost many of its original features, almost all the arches are rounded and opens between the church and monastic rooms and the rooms where the municipal offices are located.