Milazzo’s Cuba
The ruins of Contrada Masseria today lie within a large complex of shopping malls. Of the monastic complex, only the sacred building has survived to this day. It is a unique cubic construction. The only existing room is accessed by means of a low-level entrance along the southern wall. The interior is illuminated by two square windows along the eastern and western walls. Both openings seem to date back to the 16th century.
Although it is probable that all the architectural and pictorial decoration has been lost in the centuries due to the numerous refacio It is also true that the cubic mass of the Milazzese cuba returns a feeling of extreme austerity and simplicity that other Sicilian cubes do not return. Regarding the dating, we cannot ignore what Freshfield hypothesized for the cubes of Malvagna, Maccari and Santa Teresa in 1918. He considered, for purely historical reasons, that he could date these structures in a period of time between the VII sec. d.C. and the IX/X sec. d.C., that is to say between the complete Greekization of the island and the Islamic conquest. Some of these structures survived the Arab conquest also thanks to their small size and returned to play an important role in the reform that, during the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, affected the Greek monasticism.