Villa Costanza
8 October 2019
Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel
8 October 2019
SANT’ONOFRIO
Historic building of Fardella, Chapel dedicated to Saint Onofrio
Categoria: MONUMENTAL HISTORICAL BUILDINGS
Still concealed by the huge cypresses surrounding it and which immediately stand out along the municipal road connecting the Sinnica road to Fardella, the Sant’Onofrio complex still belongs to the Costanza family. It is a particularly picturesque place, also thanks to its small chapel, now almost in ruins, the so-called ‘little red house’ that accommodated the tenant farmers and whose entrance door features a marble slab with the reconstruction date in 1923, and the house where the foodstuffs were stored.
Particularly interesting is the position of these small buildings around a vast property and framed by the monumental cypresses serving as a backdrop.
According to popular legend, a statue of the hermit St Onuphrius was found inside an oak, which still exists today. The small chapel, open to worship, was built nearby and attended by all the tenant farmers from neighbouring lands and the entire settlement.
The chapel, of a modest size and in a higher position compared to the other buildings, consists of a single area with an altar featuring a large floral relief at the centre topped with a niche and three angels above the niche. The wooden double pitched roof has now collapsed, while the facade, still visible, has a gable supported by centring, with a decorated oculus in the middle, perhaps once a window. Above the cornice of the marble portal, there is an inscription memorialising the foundation of the church dedicated to the saint, by Giovanni Di Giura in 1900. It is also worth noting the small bell tower on the main facade on two stories, with arched openings housing the two small bells.
In this farmstead, later owned by the Costanza family, one can recognise one of the farms of the Cistercian monastery of Sagittario nearby, with a small church already in the 1600s, dedicated to the Egyptian saint whose worship was brought in the area by monks from the East.
