Teatro Gebel Hamed
The Teatro Gebel Hamed is a cinema and performance space in Erice, Sicily, housed in the 16th-century former Church of Saints Rocco and Sebastiano. Its name recalls the medieval Arabic name for Monte Erice, recorded in sources such as the 12th-century traveller and geographer Ibn Jubayr as Jabal Hamid, often rendered in European sources as Gebel Hamed.
History
The Church of Saints Rocco and Sebastiano was founded in 1576 in fulfilment of a vow made by the citizens of Erice to the two saints during the plague of 1570. The church was enlarged in 1610, and again in 1625 after a further outbreak of plague. Its design featured a sober late-16th-century portal, three naves supported by four columns, and seven altars including the high altar.In 1636 Father Matteo Curatolo of the Third Order of San Francesco di Martogna established a small convent in an adjacent building. Expansion was halted in 1658 when Pope Innocent X ordered the suppression of small convents, leaving the site neglected.
In 1752 Bishop Giuseppe Stella of Mazara adapted the convent premises as a conservatory for penitent women; the church and the new conservatory were joined internally by a covered passage. The conservatory was dissolved in 1915, and its property was transferred to the municipality of Erice by the Congregation of Charity; the adjacent former convent subsequently housed the offices of the Pretura and conciliation court until 1965. Since 2015, following works carried out between 2011 and 2015, the former convent has housed the Cordici Museum.
The church itself, closed to worship for many years, was converted into a cinema in 1940 to house the municipal theatre, which until then had been located in the Palazzo dei Marchesi Pilati, part of the Palazzo Municipale complex on Piazza della Loggia.