On piazza Cordova of the village of Aidone, in Sicily, overlooks the Tower Adelasia, today is the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria La Cava. Originally the tower was one of the defense towers along the walls that costeggiavano the western slopes of the Norman village. Of the original plant, Norman, retains the lower plane from the top ogival portal and, inside, the cross vault, the beautiful side portal in limestone and the majestic apse. In the centuries has undergone many alterations and overlays in different styles: the gothic-catalan on the second floor of the sixteenth century and the upper floor of the eighteenth century.
The church of Santa Maria was founded with the name of Santa Maria The Plano from Adelasia, nephew of count Ruggero, as we read in a diploma of 1134. Was the priory of the Benedictines. Of the medieval system retains only the apse and the tower. The current facade, incomplete, is the fruit of an ambitious project late seventeenth-century for a church with three naves. The symmetrical relationship of the portals is lost in the last radical restoration, completed in 1940: to expand the capacity of reception of the Church, they got rid of the high internal staircase, was exalted the central portal and you added up semidecagonale parvis. Was finally abandoned the project of a church with three naves and ricavarono two chapels on the western side and the premises for asylum on the eastern side. To recall the origins Norman the interior of the apse was reported to the bare stone ranks therefore in stark contrast with the decorative system dominated by the frescos of the painter Clelia silvered. The Church is also a sanctuary dedicated to St Philip the Apostle: The simulacrum of the saint, considered miraculous, kept in a chapel, richly decorated with stuccoes, is the object of great veneration.