Santuario di S. Maria dei Martiri

The church, also dedicated to San Francesco di Paola, stands on a hill overlooking the city, the Colle della Minerva.

The building, with an adjoining convent, was constructed starting in 1614, on the site of a pre-existing structure commissioned by Alfonso of Aragon, in memory of the terrible Massacre of the Holy Martyrs that took place here. On August 14, 1480, three days after the city's occupation, Achmet Pasha, commander of the Turkish fleet, ordered all male inhabitants over the age of fifteen to be brought to the hill. Achmet proposed to the prisoners that they renounce their Christian faith in exchange for their lives. Eight hundred men bravely resisted, being beheaded, one by one, on a large boulder. Tradition has it that the first to be executed, Antonio Primaldo, miraculously remained standing, headless, until the end of the macabre execution. One of the Saracen executioners, Berlabei, was so moved by this demonstration of faith that he threw away his weapon and declared himself a Christian. His cruel sentence was to be impaled. The column from his torture still stands along the steps today.

Inside the church, among the altars and exquisite paintings, stands out a 16th-century work by Ludovico Zoppi depicting the massacre of the martyrs.