Royal Palace

Most of its medieval walls, both inside and out, are now obscured by the less attractive additions of subsequent times, but the Pisan Tower of the Normans' Royal Palace looks much as it did nine centuries ago, at least from the outside. Don't judge it from outside, for if its exterior is less than impressive, the Palace's interior still evokes much of its former grandeur. Its arched windows are similar to those of the Norman-Arab churches of Palermo, and the mosaics of some of the Palace's chambers are unabashedly redolent of those found in many of the same churches. A few majestic corridors crowned by vaulted ceilings are the Royal Palace's silent testaments to another era, when the Normans' polyglot Kingdom of Sicily was the most prosperous country in Europe.

. . . Roger II ordered the palace's construction sometime before 1132.

. . . The Palatine Chapel and Roger's Room (the throne room) are the most evocative of the Kingdom's splendor. Roger's Room is usually closed to the public, but the Palatine Chapel is open during traditional hours. Resplendent with traditional Orthodox iconography and a painted Arabic ceiling, the Palatine Chapel seems to be a Monreale Cathedral in miniature, though it antedates that church by decades. Of note are the fine icons of Saint Peter and Saint James, and the throne.


FROM: Best of Sicily - Quattro Canti District