Cathedral - a bright pearl of one of the most picturesque areas of Syracuse. This is where you can get acquainted in detail with the features of church architecture in Italy - in the different elements of the building are intertwined typical of the architecture features that can be found in every town of the peninsula from Trento to Taranto.

Most likely, the cathedral was built on the site of a pre-existing temple, which sent their ancient cults Siculo - traces of their dwellings can be seen in Via Minerva and in the courtyard of the nearby Palace of the Archbishop. In 480 BC, Greek settlers built a Doric temple here in honor of the goddess Athena for help in the battle against the Carthaginians. Ten of the once existed 36 columns and can be seen today at the wall of the left nave of the cathedral. A monolithic block, formerly part of the architrave of the temple, is now part of the altar in the presbytery.

This Doric temple was one of the richest in all of Magna Grecia, and it certainly means that he had been repeatedly looted. Especially serious damage was caused to the temple in the 1st century BC Roman Praetor Gaius Verres Lichiniusom in retaliation for the prosecution of corruption (it must be said, a fair). Among the items destroyed them - the portraits of the first rulers of Sicily.

It is not known when the ruins of an ancient Greek temple turned into a Christian church. In 640, at the initiative of Bishop Zosima it became known as the Cathedral of Syracuse. Bishop significantly reconstructed the building, extending it and, unfortunately, virtually destroying the traces of former buildings. It survived only Byzantine arches and hemispherical apse at the end of the northern side aisle and a wonderful marble floor. In the next few centuries, the cathedral once again became a kind of repository of priceless works of art. When in the middle of the 9th century the Arabs invaded Sicily, they have taken away more than 5000 pounds of gold and 10,000 pounds of silver. And then plundered cathedral was the most terrible humiliation - it was converted into a mosque in the whole century.

But, like many other Sicilian "jewels", the church was saved by the Normans, who returned it to the bosom of Christianity, and erected in the central nave fortified walls, have survived virtually unchanged. When the Normans the apse was decorated with mosaics, fragments of which can be seen to this day on the wall behind the font. The font, by the way, was made by the Greeks, and it is on the foundation of the Norman era in the form of lions, carved in the 13th century.

After a period of relative prosperity in eastern Sicily was again in ruins - this time as a result of the terrible earthquake in 1693. The cathedral was almost destroyed, and, like most of the buildings was restored later in the unique style of the Sicilian Baroque. Around preserved the nave and apse were built several elegantly decorated chapels with elegant columns, elegant wrought iron gates, with colorful murals and statues skillfully executed. The subject of special pride was the facade of the church, built a century later. It was designed by Andrea Palma and decorated with sculptures of the great Sicilian master Ignazio Marabitti.

The final stage of the restoration of the cathedral with a 3-year history began in 1911, when the architect Paolo Orso started the laborious work to remove the grisly "decoration" of the 19th century, which was subjected to every Italian church.