Following the administrative merger of Barcellona and Pozzo di Gotto in 1836, the doubling of the population required a new larger temple. The project was accelerated by the disastrous 1908 Messina earthquake that damaged the old Cathedral of St. Sebastian and made it unusable. The old cathedral, dating from 1606, would have also prevented the construction of the Via Roma, the natural access to the railway station. It formed, together with the adjacent "Church of Agonizing", the Placido Mandanici Theatre (destroyed by fire in 1967) and the Monte di Pieta, the old city of Barcellona until the first decades of the 1900, when it was completely demolished during the building of the new Cathedral.