Forget today’s roads, imagine yourself on foot or on the back of a donkey, get away from the trazzere and follow some steep path on the slopes of the Valley of the Agrò river, until you reach the convent Basiliano of Saints Pietro and Paolo.

And suddenly you forget every effort, "here everything is grace and beauty, calm and voluptuousness." (thank you Charles), but there is little luxury, if not the very refined architecture of the church. I had already visited this astonishing church, for a documentary filmed and later never published.

There is always a reason and, back on the spot, I understood thanks to the exquisite hospitality of the architect Daniele Tèfa. Neglecting his activities, he made himself available as often the Sicilians are used to do with a visitor. In this way I was able to appreciate the structure of Saints Peter and Paul as I did the first time, but thanks to Tefà, I now took some notes regarding his work on the restoration of the monument on behalf of the Superintendence of Cultural and Environmental Heritage.

In particular, the South nave was restored in the pure Sicula tradition, it was yielding. Daniele showed me some work notes including an interesting analysis of the building from the point of view of thermal exchanges, as well as the materials used, including a lot of lava stone from the nearby Etna.

There is no intervention on the roof of the north nave due to the total safety of the church, but there are no funds. Thus the conservative restoration work already carried out is frustrated because not properly completed.

I have the impression that often in Sicily, while you have the skills, the know-how, the taste and the will to do, you are forced to put patches on bleeding wounds.

What’s the point? Shouldn’t a recovery plan give posterity an entirely saved building? Or should we always run the risk that -as recently in Monreale- a restoration will lead to a structural failure in less than 20 years?

We hope that professionals like Daniele Tefà, can find in the future the possibility of a less approximate expression, they who as volunteers dedicate part of their energy to the promotion of the sites that they have helped to save and that no one knows better than them.