Gezicht op de San Giovanni degli Eremiti in Palermo 1860 - 1900

Giuseppe Incorpora captured this view of the San Giovanni degli Eremiti in Palermo with photography. The church, crowned with its distinctive domes, evokes the architecture of the Islamic world, a testament to Sicily’s complex past. Consider the dome, an ancient symbol of the heavens, seen in Roman architecture and later adopted by Christianity and Islam. Here, it speaks of cultural exchange, its form carrying echoes of distant lands and shared histories. We see the dome in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, or the Pantheon in Rome, transcending its origins, accumulating layers of meaning. This cross-cultural pollination reflects a deep interplay between memory and form, hinting at the power of symbols to transcend their original context. The domes invite us to consider how collective memory shapes and reshapes our understanding of the sacred.