Chiesa dei Santi Quaranta Martiri alla Guilla - Palermo

The church was built in 1605 by some families of nobles from Pisa, traders who had lived in Palermo since the Norman Conquest and were devoted to the cult of San Ranieri.

The forty martyrs he refers to are the Christian soldiers of a Roman legion , condemned to die in a frozen swamp in Armenia in 320 AD, under Emperor Licinius.

The Church presents itself to the viewer with a large tuff façade, in which is placed a sober portal with the cross of the Republic of Pisa, in memory of the Brotherhood of the Pisan nation, accompanied by pairs of aediculum windows and a triangular tympanum.

The interior, rebuilt in 1725 , is decorated with stucco work and frescoes by the Flemish Guglielmo Borremans, depicting episodes from the lives of San Ranieri, San Torpè and Sant'Evelino. However, the fake stucco frames were designed by architect Gaetano Lazzara. The square apse contains a beautiful eighteenth-century wooden altar. There is a valuable wooden crucifix on the table.

Willem Vandenameele