One of the largest monasteries in Europe, built over a lava flow and now full of students. Its guided tours go from Roman cellars to baroque cloisters, and the church next door has the best view in town.
The Benedictines of San Nicolò were the richest monks in Sicily. Their monastery is the second-largest Benedictine house in Europe, after Mafra in Portugal.
It survived the lava of 1669, which stopped at its walls, then was rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake. The state seized it in 1866; since the 1970s it has been restored for the university's humanities department, partly by the architect Giancarlo De Carlo.
Guided tours visit the two cloisters, the kitchens built over the 1669 lava flow, a Roman house beneath the floor and the great library. Night tours go into a hidden floor.
Beside it, the church of San Nicolò is the largest in Sicily. Its façade was never finished for lack of money, and the climb to its dome gives the city's panorama.
A tour of about an hour and a quarter, then the church.
The vast unfinished façade, its column stumps never raised.
Mosaic floors of a Roman home, found under the monastery.
The monks built their kitchens straight onto the 1669 lava flow.
The great cloister with its tiled garden pavilion.
The painted library, then climb the church dome for Catania and Etna.
_-_Cloister_10.jpg?width=1280)
_-_30_12_2019_32.jpg?width=960)
A 10-minute walk west of Via Etnea, at Piazza Dante; it is close to Via dei Crociferi.
Book through the monastery's site; English tours run several times a day.
Special evening tours open rooms not on the day route; check dates.
Catania practical notes →Photographs from Wikimedia Commons and Pexels under their licences.
_-_Cloister_10.jpg){kind=link}
_-_30_12_2019_32.jpg){kind=link}
