Santa Chiara (Saint Clare) is the

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

church in the town of

Enna Enna ( or ; ; , less frequently ), known from the Middle Ages until 1926 as Castrogiovanni ( ), is a city and located roughly at the center of Sicily, southern Italy, in the province of Enna, towering above the surrounding countryside. It has e ...

, in the region of

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

, Italy.

History and description

The church was commissioned in the early 17th century by the aristocrat Francesco Rotondo and his mother Costanza. The

Baroque style The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (i ...

façade has a broken tympanum with a coat of arms spelling IHS, the Jesuit symbol. The façade is preceded by a broad and long staircase. The church has a single nave and the apse has a

maiolica Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. The most renowned Italian maiolica is from the Renaissance period. These works were known as ''istoriato'' wares ("painted with stories") when depicting historical and ...

floor, installed in 1850. The church contains a canvas by

Giuseppe Salerno Giuseppe Salerno, more commonly called ''il Zoppo di Gangi'' (Cripple from the town of Gangi) (1588–1630) was an Italian painter active in his native Sicily in a Mannerist style. He may have used the title ''Zoppo'' because he was a pupil of Ga ...

, nicknamed the Zoppo di Gangi. By 1619 the church was under the ownership of the

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

order, until their expulsion from the Kingdom of Naples in 1767. Only later was the church linked to the Clarissan order. After World War II, the church housed a Shrine for burial of the fallen in the war.Comune of Enna
website, tourism entry on church.

References

16th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Italy Roman Catholic churches in Enna {{Sicily-RC-church-stub