Baroque Cathedral in Sicily Reopens 11 Years After Collapse
Monday, June 18th, 2007
One of Sicily’s most treasured Baroque cathedrals reopened Monday, more than 11 years after a large part of the church collapsed.
In a €40 million (US$53 million) restoration that began in 1999, experts used surviving parts of the historic church to rebuild and strengthen the St. Nicholas Cathedral in the southeastern city of Noto. Weakened by an earthquake and a heavy rainfall, the frescoed dome and right section of the 18th-century cathedral collapsed in 1996.
Noto’s cathedral “is reborn,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said at a ceremony marking the church’s reopening. “It was rebuilt exactly as it was before, using the same hand cut stone and a large part of the original material.”
Some 83,000 workers pieced together the cathedral using traditional building techniques and stone taken from nearby quarries, while also strengthening the structure with carbon fibers to protect it from tremors in the quake-prone area, said officials in charge of the project.
In a message to the bishop of Noto, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his gratitude to all those who had worked on the “imposing and delicate” restoration, helping the cathedral “shine anew as a recognized jewel of historical value and of Baroque beauty typical of southeastern Sicily.”
The cathedral is considered a gem of late Baroque architecture in Sicily, a style common to that corner of the island since much of the region had to be rebuilt after a devastating quake in 1693. Noto and other nearby towns rich in Baroque architecture are listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
Source: International Herald Tribune
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