Ciminna, formerly called “Palermo la Nica” (The small Palermo), is one of the most interesting hilltop villages in the Palermo area from a historical-cultural point of view. History and traditions represent the soul of a territory, Ciminna is a concrete example of a rural reality where artistic and naturalistic resources come together to give us an overall picture of great value. Ciminna is the town of churches, ministers of worship and music. Its artistic wealth is the fruit of the work of famous painters and sculptors of the 16th and 17th centuries such as Simone di Wobreck, Scipione Li Volsi, Pietro Novelli, Vincenzo La Barbera, Geronimo Gerardi, Filippo Randazzo, Vito D’Anna, the Gaginis, the Li Volsi, B. Valenza, Filippo Quattrocchi and Antonino Barcellona. Many artists and illustrious people were born in Ciminna, among the most important we remember Francesco Giganti, Melchiorre Di Bella, Vincenzo and Don Paolo Amato, true interpreter of the Palermo Baroque of the second half of the seventeenth century, Father Pasquale Sarullo, the anthropologist Vito Graziano and the composers Maestro Antonino Cuti and Maestro Gabriele Bonanno. Among the monumental beauties: the Mother Church dedicated to Santa Maria Maddalena, San Giovanni Battista Church, known as the Black Crucifix, San Francesco d’Assisi, San Domenico and that of San Francesco di Paola.
Of particular interest is the Municipal Library located in the premises of the former Convent of San Francesco d’Assisi with the annexed Biblioteca Cappuccinorum (16th-19th century) which houses an incunabulum from 1492, entitled Supplementum Chronicarum. The section dedicated to modern literature includes many volumes on the Risorgimento, partly donated by Francesco Brancato, a historian from Ciminna, after whom the Library itself is named, and partly purchased by successive municipal administrations over time.
