Tindari - Santuario di Tindari

Tindari has a long Greek and Roman history and was already a bishop's seat in ancient times. In 836 it was destroyed by the Arabs. In 1094 the present settlement was founded, destroyed during the Sicilian Vespers (1282), rebuilt and destroyed again by pirates.

Where the great pilgrim church rises on its prominent hill above the wide bay of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Greeks already had their acropolis. The Black Madonna of Tindari is venerated in the Roman Catholic pilgrimage church, built in the 1950s around a smaller, older church. According to tradition, the image of the Santuario came to Sicily in the 8th/9th century from Constantinople, where iconoclasm had broken out. Today it is named "Nera di Tindari".

Legend has it that the image washed up in a box. The portrait bears the inscription NIGRA SUM SED FORMOSA ("I am black, but beautiful").

I have already uploaded a lot of photos from previous trips to Sicily. Now I will add only a few. If you want to see more, follow this link:

www.ipernity.com/doc/323415/album/1238300