Mario Cucinella designs the Santa Rosalia float: how an architect interprets Palermo’s most deeply felt ritual

For four centuries, the Santa Rosalia float has crossed Palermo like a ritual machine: an ephemeral yet monumental structure, built to move through the city and transform devotion into a collective spectacle. This year, for the first time, it was designed by an architect born in Palermo itself: Mario Cucinella. He envisioned a moving architecture that rises more than ten metres into the air, houses a garden of 150 plants, sets 300 luminous butterflies in flight and carries the statue of the Santuzza at its summit.

Palermo’s identity can be read through evolution and metamorphosis: in a constant state of becoming, shaped by layers of peoples and cultures that, overlapping over the centuries, have hybridised its architecture, landscape, cuisine and language. Change is the nature of this city. And Palazzo Branciforte, already restored by Gae Aulenti, is preparing for a new transformation: soon, an extension of the building will house a Garden Museum dedicated to Santa Rosalia, designed by Mario Cucinella Architects.

The Float translates this vocation for change into an architectural body that moves through Palermo. It is a metal structure clad in wooden panels, organised across staggered levels and mounted on the traditional wheeled machine, still pulled by hand today. Its ascending configuration evokes Monte Pellegrino, the place of hermitage where the virgin Rosalia chose to live, renouncing her family’s wealth.

Inside this volume, a lush woodland takes root. Thanks to collaboration with the team of the Botanical Garden, the structure houses 150 specimens distributed across approximately 40 planters: a living catalogue of Mediterranean flora and the Sicilian agricultural landscape. Laurel, holm oak, mastic, myrtle, rosemary, citrus trees, olive trees, palms and cypresses create a richly layered composition of colour and volume.

The wooden walls enclosing the garden reinterpret the Arab-Norman visual repertoire through decorations and bas-reliefs inspired by the geometric tradition of Islamic art—a distinctive language that Palermo expresses in its façades and historic floors.

At the feet of the Saint’s statue, 300 individually coloured and illuminated butterflies inhabit the structure, glowing with a light of their own. They “fly” above a framework rising more than ten metres high, transforming the upper section of the Float into a light and mobile system.

But the Float is also part of a broader line of research running through Cucinella’s work: the attempt to rebuild a relationship between architecture and nature. A relationship based on collaboration, in which architecture once again works alongside natural processes, climate, landscape and materials.

At the top of the structure stands the statue of the Saint, an artwork by artist Filippo Sapienza: a pure, white volume, an exposed figure holding a crucifix made from the wood of migrant boats, together with an olive branch.

Four hundred years have passed since the plague that struck Palermo gave way to life. Ever since, that transition has been commemorated with a procession that remains the most deeply felt and eagerly awaited event for the people of Palermo. The myth of Santa Rosalia was born precisely from this transformation: from plague to healing, marked by the moment when the relics of the Santuzza were carried in procession for the first time.

From that moment on, Palermo learned that its survival also depends on its ability to transform pain. “From tragedy comes ritual, from ritual comes community” was the title of the latest edition of the festival.

The Float travels along the Cassaro, the ancient axis that cuts through Palermo, following a linear route interrupted by ritual stations: it sets off from the Norman Palace, stops in front of the Cathedral and then reaches the most recognisable intersection in Palermo, the Quattro Canti. The journey ends at Porta Felice, the ancient monumental gateway marking the furthest edge of the historic centre and accompanying the Saint towards the sea.

For one night, between 13 and 14 July, this ephemeral architecture crosses Palermo together with the city itself. The structure, the garden, the butterflies and the statue thus become part of a ritual that continues to transform, four centuries after the plague and the first procession of the Santuzza.

And as the Float moves along the Cassaro, Palermo once again recognises itself in its oldest ritual: “Viva Palermo e Santa Rosalia!" ("Long live Palermo and Santa Rosalia!”)

Opening image: Mario Cucinella Architects, Carro di Santa Rosalia, 2026, Palermo, Italy. Photo by Davide Gazzotti, courtesy of Mca – Mario Cucinella Architects