Palermo, the capital of and largest city in Sicily, has a history that dates back thousands of years. Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Byzantine… all of these civilizations had settlements or large cities here. But the golden age of Palermo, and indeed all of Sicily, began with the Arab conquest of the island starting in 826.

In that year, a Byzantine commander named Euphemius rose up against the imperial government in Syracuse, and enlisted the aid of the Emir of the Aghlabid dynasty in Tunisia to help. By 902, the Arabs had conquered the entire island, although a few fortresses would hold out a few more decades. Muslim rule was incredibly tolerant of those living here, but the Popes of Rome feared that a non-Catholic stronghold just off the coast of Italy would mean an imminent invasion of the peninsula, so they solicited help from Europe to retake Sicily.

That help came in the form of Roger I, a Norman noble, who took the island from 1068 to 1091, establishing a short-lived Norman dynasty that would last until the death of King William II (the fourth Norman king of Sicily after two Rogers and William I) without an heir in 1189, which would in turn usher in brief periods of German and French rule before a long period under Spanish dynasties.

Monumental buildings in Palermo take one of two forms. Some (most) are from the Spanish periods, featuring the palaces of nobles and some stunning baroque architecture. (As of this moment, I am not planning to write about baroque Palermo, but my personal favorite place from this period is the 1630s Church of Jesus of Casa Professa.)

The second group of buildings are those from this Norman period, mainly constructed between roughly 1130 and 1180. Together, these nine beauties make up the UNESCO World Heritage Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalu and Monreale. I had a chance to visit six of the nine, and will share my experiences with you.

It’s important to note the context and timing here. The Norman invasion of Sicily was basically done at the same time (some initial skirmishes were even before) the invasion of England in 1066. When William the Conquerer took over England, he built imposing fortresses, imposed a sort of second class citizenship on the prior-ruling Anglo-Saxons, and pushed Norman culture on the area (to the point that the kings and queens of England spoke French for generations, rather than English). By contrast, when Roger I took Sicily, those living here were allowed to keep their own cultures intact, and his version of Norman rule looked much closer to Arab than to what he left behind in France. This is especially true in the architecture, which is what the UNESCO site seeks to protect.

Perhaps the best example is the Palermo Cathedral. It was initially built in the 1180s (although the interior wasn’t finished until centuries later under Spanish rule, for reasons I’ll get into in a moment), constructed to be a Catholic cathedral from the get-go. However, Roger was so taken by Arab architecture (and by the workmanship of that population, which continued to do the heavy architectural lifting) that it would seem to have more in common with a mosque of the time than a church. The towers resemble minarets, and the exterior stonework is done in typically Muslim geometric patterns.

So why wasn’t the interior finished? Well, as construction was going on, King William II had a bit of a falling out with the archbishop of Palermo. So he decided to have another – competing – cathedral constructed on a mountainside a few miles outside the city. He claimed to have had a vision from the Virgin Mary instructing him to do so, and that was enough to justify pulling all of the workers from the Palermo Cathedral to his new site. As with the other, the Cathedral of Monreale was done with those same Arab-inspired geometric features, although this time the interior was completed.

The main portion of the cathedral is done over in golden mosaic, featuring biblical scenes from both the Old and New Testaments, images of saints, and more. And this gets us to the other mark of the Arab-Norman style. The first instinct one has walking into this gleaming interior is that it is an Orthodox church of some denomination. Why? Because Catholic churches of the period were typically done in stucco and frescoes, not in mosaic. That is a staunchly Byzantine/Orthodox style. But this was – as with its cousin in Palermo – always a Catholic cathedral by design.

These two distinctive elements – geometric patterns and inlaid mosaic – are what sets the Arab-Norman style apart, and it can really only be found here in Palermo. And it doesn’t just hold in the cathedrals; smaller churches follow those same basic rules, although most tend to prefer one to the other.

When it comes to naked geometry, the Church of San Cataldo is the best clear example. From the outside, the 1154 church is a simple square, but with three domes that would be easily found on a North African mosque of the time. These are not the ornate domes of most domed churches (like the one on the Palermo Cathedral that was added centuries later with the Spanish renovations).

The interior is bare stone, but gazing around reveals the geometry, from the patterns on the window screens to the inside of the domes themselves.

The Church of Saint John (San Giovanni) of the Hermits is in a similar style, although even more bare since – unlike San Cataldo – this one is no longer a functioning church. Again, one sees the domes, which reveal geometric patterns both from the outside and inside.

Contrastingly, the Church of St. Mary of the Admiral sits on the same platform as San Cataldo, although it was built in the prior decade, beginning in 1143. This one has the mosaic, both in gold and in blue. Once again, one must remember that this was built specifically as a Catholic church, especially when one considers that, unlike the Cathedral of Monreale, the words in the mosaic patterns are in Greek and not in Latin. This is the Arab-Norman key at work again: borrowing from the best of what was already here, and working that into their culture, rather than replacing it.

Of course, Arab culture and its Norman spinoff would continue to affect Sicily and Palermo long after those cultures were gone. Today, Palermo is known for narrow, winding alleys that hold markets. These date back all the way to the Arab souks of the 9th and 10th centuries, though lined by more modern Spanish buildings.

Likewise, the most famous of Sicilian foods descend from those times. Take the fried and stuffed rice ball, the arancina (plural arancini). Rice was brought here by the Arabs, and the meat mixture inside is traditionally beef or lamb, not pork, reflecting Muslim dietary restrictions.

I’ve saved the best of the Arab-Norman sights for last. Shortly after the conquest, Roger I began work on a palace, built on top of existing structures dating all the way back to the Greek era. The so-called Norman Palace was completed in the 1140s with the addition of the Palatine Chapel. (The palace has undergone a number of remodels over the centuries, and part of the building is still used today by the Sicilian government, so this one interior room is the best look back at the twelfth century.)

The Palatine Chapel is the mosaic and geometric motherlode, the perfect little room on which all of the other constructions were based. The walls and domes feature bright gold mosaic (you can tell the order of when the mosaics were completed based on whether or not they have Greek – earlier – or Latin – later – inscriptions), and the ceiling and accents are done in incredibly detailed geometric patterns. I’ll include a few photos here, although they can’t do justice to the room.

This was the golden age of Palermo and of Sicily. A tolerant society using the best of its diversity to construct truly epic buildings: that is Arab-Norman Palermo. This short-lived period stands in sharp contrast not only to what came after (the Inquisition and other wonders deliver by the absolutely intolerant Spanish), but also to the almost simultaneous Norman invasion of England. It is a history worth seeing, and worth honoring.

Like it? Pin it!