Ansgerius quod ego… Ecclesiae primus fundamina ieci. La cattedrale normanna di Catania: materiali per un riesame [Ansgerius quod ego... Ecclesiae primus fundamina ieci. The Norman cathedral of Catania: Materials for a review]

The construction of the Norman cathedral of Catania, at the same time the church of a new Benedictine foundation in Sicily, is part of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy. The cathedral, conceived as a religious and military center at the same time, was founded at the end of the 11th Century, for commission of the Great Count Roger of Hauteville, who in 1091 called from the Calabria the monk Angerio, of Breton origins and already prior of Santa Maria at Sant’Eufenia, naming him abbot and bishop of Catania. The earthquakes of 1169 and above all of 1693 caused considerable damage to the building, which was rebuilt in the 18th Century with the exception of the surviving Romanesque parts: the apses, the transept with adjacent structures and some portions of the perimeter walls and façade. The purpose of this study is to examine again the structure and function of the medieval spaces of the eastern part of the cathedral and the Norman planimetric development with the help of unpublished documents, coming from public and private archives, and a new series of investigations and architectural reliefs, work in progress. For the first time some hypotheses have also been put forward on the unpublished crypt, recently found under the central apse. The Norman status of the monument is therefore reconsidered in correlation with other Sicilian Norman cathedrals, such as those of Mazara and Cefalù, and with different contexts in Calabria and beyond the Alps, specifically in Normandy.