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Once, Raphael's miraculous masterpiece occupied this skeletal, unfinished Gothic church.
Palermo’s roofless Santa Maria dello Spasimo is representative of the storied city itself—the church’s bare walls and skeletal arches summon a lost grandeur characteristic of the ancient capital’s decadent majesty. The unfinished church was one of the many victims of the 16th-century Ottoman raids on the Mediterranean coast. 500 years later, construction has still not resumed, and the ghostly Gothic church was intended to accompany an Olivetan monastery in the early 16th century.
