Siracusa - Santuario della Madonna delle Lacrime

To the north of the the Archeological Museum stands a still incomplete round structure, the Santuario della Madonnina delle Lacrime by Enrico Castiglioni, which is intended ultimately to be 76m/250ft high. It is on the spot where in 1953 a plaster statue of the Madonna is said to have cried several times when a woman who was having a difficult birth called upon the Virgin Maria for aid. Until the building is completed a temporary room has been built where people can come to pay reverence, in the portico of which documents are displayed describing the phenomenon of the weeping Madonna.