Chiesa Madre and Torre Campanaria

Chiesa Madre and Torre Campanaria

The Church is dedicated to Maria SS. Assunta and dates back to the first half of the 14th century, when King Frederick III of Aragon stayed in Erice during the War of the Vespro (1314) against the Angevins of Naples.

The exterior of the church retains its original Gothic forms, but the rectangular pronaos on high ogival arches was added about a century later.

Lifting the look you can see the magnificent central rose window, of very recent workmanship. In the right wall of the church are embedded the nine crosses coming, according to the tradition, from the temple of Venus. The restorations of the second half of the nineteenth century on the project of the architect Dominici have changed the ancient fourteenth-century appearance of the interior, from the decorative point of view, prevails in fact the eclectic neo-Gothic style.

Architecturally, the bell tower is in dialogue with the church and faces it, with its 28 metres of height suggesting its ancient function of sighting tower, and today it allows a bird’s eye view of the town.

Its strong and square shape is marked by single lancet windows and two orders of Gothic mullioned windows, chiaramontano type, and crowned by battlements.