Piazza Marina
From Via Alloro, entering IV Aprile street, you can reach Piazza Marina, originally southern strait of the harbour of the “Cala”, reclaimed durino the XIV century the feudatory Giovanni Chiaramonte who built his palace here. The building, known as “Steri” and seat of the Inquisition till 1782, shows outside, on an high ashlared basament, a series of mullioned and three mullioned windows on slender small columns with ogived frames with geometric themes. On the first floor the «Sala Magna» by wooden roof with scenes of chivalry painted in 1377 by “Darenu da Palermo”, “Cecco di Naro” and “Simone da Corleone”. Along the same side of the Square, the “small Abatellis Palace”, the Palace of Castillo (in the XIX century “Hotel de France”) and the outstanding palace of the Royal Mint follow one another. On the North Side of the Square, beyond “Corso Vittorio Emanuele”, rises St. Mary of the Chain’s church, erected at the end of the XV century, with Gothic-Hispanic like shapes, maybe on Matteo Carnelivari’s plan, the same architect of Abatellis Palace. The next building, today Record Office, was the Teatini Fathers’s house till 1612. St. John of the Neapolitans’ church, in the opposite corner, was built between the XVI

reference text:
Chirco Adriana, Palermo La città ritrovata: venti itinerari entro le mura, Palermo1997