St. George of the Genoese

The History

The Church of San Giorgio was built between 1575 and 1596 in the outermost part of the Loggia district, right next to the new pier that the Palermo Senate had recently decided to build to modernize the port. The Genoese's choice of this location confirms the dominant role assumed by the Ligurian community, which had by then replaced the Pisans in the banking monopoly and the main mercantile activities of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples.

The adopted basilica style, with three naves and side chapels recessed into the wall thickness, indicates the desire to erect an ambitious building, both economically and architecturally, which only the most important religious orders and the wealthiest nations, such as the Genoese, could adopt in sixteenth-century Palermo. GIORGIO DI FACCIO, by not having a portico-loggia on the front, as in other contemporary churches, entrusted the temple with a predominantly religious role, but above all, he developed a church architecture now considered the most authoritative example of Palermitan Renaissance architecture. Inside the building, the tombstones and marble aedicules testify to the competition that existed among the wealthiest Genoese families to secure prestigious recognition in the church of the Nation.

Recently, and after a restoration, the paintings that decorated the aedicules have been reinstalled in the church, further confirming how Palermo at that time was a cosmopolitan city of European dimensions that maintained cultural exchanges with the rest of Italy. Among them are Martyrdom of Saint George and Baptism of Jesus by JACOPO PALMA, Saint Luke Painting the Virgin by FILIPPO PALADINI, Martyrdom of Saint Vincent of Saragossa by JACOPO DA EMPOLI, Madonna of the Rosary and Saints by LUCA GIORDANO, and The Madonna Queen of Genoa by DOMENICO FIASELLA.