We decided to spend our last day back in Catania. Not that there was a lot more to see, but to check that it wasn’t a mirage.
We started at the Porta Garibaldi which is just visible in the distance from the Duomo. Built in 1768 to commemorate the wdding of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies to Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine, it was designed in full neo-classical glory by Stefano Ittar and Francesco Battaglia:-
We had lunch in the Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini, not for the fine, but basic food (very good fresh grilled fish), but for the opportunity to sit out in a square designed by Vaccarini and Ittar in the style of a Spanish plaza major with reused Roman columns:-
After lunch, we discovered the Greek Theatre – actually Roman – where Alcibiades is said to have harangued the Catanians to join the Athenians in their fight against Syracuse:-
Up the street is the Sanctuario S. Rita in S. Agostino:-
And, not much further on, a church which has been identified by Edward Chaney as Chiesa della Santissima Trinità, apparently now deconsecrated and divided between a school and the carabinieri, designed by Francesco Battaglia and with a façade thought to be by Ittar:-
Everywhere, there are vistas down grubby side streets:-
Last, a manhole cover for Jeremy Corbyn:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Your whole Sicilian foray has been a delight for us readers. Thank you.
I agree with Mark Fisher. You have certainly whetted my appetite to want to go there. Thank you.
Cheap flight to Catania ! Charles
Caro Carlo
If you were referring (appealing?) to yrs truly as ‘the author of the Blue Guide’, I was merely the author of its gripping introduction on the history of anglo-american travel to Sicily (brutally dropped after a couple of editions in the 1980s but mercifully reprised in The Evolution of the Grand Tour), but I can identify yr v fine photo of a Borrominiesque church façade. It is that of the Chiesa della Santissima Trinità which was indeed part of a convent; now divided between the carabinieri and a school (the liceo scientifico: Enrico Boggio Lera, whose entrance is immediately to the left of the façade). Post Alonzo di Benedetto and Vaccarini where the convent itself was concerned, the design of the church seems to have been largely that of Francesco Battaglia, the facade perhaps completed by Ittar, as you suggest.
Cordial salutes E….
Dear Edward, Yes, I was indeed hoping and presuming that you would be able to identify the church and am duly impressed by your knowledge and recall. Thank you. Charles