Monte Pellegrino, whose rocky outline overlooks Palermo, has played an important part in the city’s history. Signs of human habitation going back to the Stone Age have been found here in caves with wall carvings of human and animal figures. During the Punic Wars in the third century BC, the Carthaginians camped on Monte Pellegrino while besieging the Romans. As the name implies (pellegrino meaning pilgrim) this area has long had sacred connotations.
In Norman times, Rosalia, a young noble woman lived as a hermit on the mountain, dedicating herself to a life of prayer and meditation. She died in 1170 and was subsequently canonised, becoming one of several favoured saints in the city. On July 15th 1624, when Palermo was being ravaged by the plague, her bones were discovered in a cave on the mountain. They were recovered, taken to Palermo, and used as relics to raise the morale of the people in combating the plague. Rosalia became the hugely popular patron saint of Palermo, known affectionately as the Santuzza or little saint. When in 1626 the plague came to an end, it was due according to the archbishop of Palermo, to the intervention of Santa Rosalia.
In 1647 the senate announced that, in recognition of the saint’s contribution to the city, two dates would be celebrated in perpetuity as festivals in her honour. The first was 15 July, to commemorate the finding of her bones, and the other was 4 September, her dies natalis, the date of her death and rebirth to eternal life. The July festino has continued ever since while the September date is marked by a procession to the saint’s Sanctuary on Monte Pellegrino.

The Sanctuary, whose origins date back to 1624, consists of a deep cave under the rock covered by a simple Baroque facade. It has been a place of popular pilgrimage from the beginning and a procession, traditionally barefoot, comes here from Palermo each year on September 4th. Inside the cave the atmosphere is kept cool by dripping water which is said to have miraculous properties. In the first part of the cave is a Baroque altar with Solomonic columns and the remains of a Punic altar. Deeper inside is Tedeschi’s statue of the reclining saint from 1625, which carries a golden cape provided by the Bourbon king, Charles III, covered by a decorated canopy.

It was the sanctuary’s simplicity which impressed Goethe during his visit in 1787. The shrine itself is more appropriate to the humility of the saint who took refuge there than the pomp of the festival which is celebrated in honour of her renunciation of the world. In all Christendom, which for eighteen hundred years has founded its wealth, its splendours, its solemn festivities upon the poverty of its first founders and most fervent confessors, there may well be no other sacred spot as naively decorated and touchingly venerated as this. The Sanctuary is an atmospheric place of devotion to Palermo’s patron saint visited annually by many thousands of the city’s residents. It is generally open to the public.