Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

The district just to the northwest of the train station - the Albergheria - hasn’t changed substantially for several hundred years. A warren of tiny streets and tall leaning buildings, it’s an engaging place to wander, much of the central area taken up by a street market that all but conceals several fine churches. Via Ponticello leads down past the Baroque church of Il Gesù (daily 7.30-11.30am), the first Jesuit foundation in Sicily and gloriously decorated inside, to Piazza Ballarò - along with adjacent Piazza del Carmine the focus of a raucous regular market, with bulging vegetable stalls, unmarked drinking dens and some good snack stalls. At the westernmost edge of the quarter, over Via Benedettini, is the Albergheria’s quietest haven, the deconsecrated church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti (Mon-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 9am-1pm; L8000/¬4.13) - St John of the Hermits. Built in 1132, it’s the most obviously Arabic of the city’s Norman relics, with five ochre domes topping a small church that was built upon the remains of a mosque. A path leads up through citrus trees to the church, behind which lie its celebrated late-thirteenth-century cloisters - perfect twin columns enclosing a wild garden. From San Giovanni it’s a few paces to the main road, where, if you turn right and then veer left up the steps, you’ll climb out of the fast traffic to gaze on the vast length of the Palazzo dei Normanni or Palazzo Reale (entrance on Piazza Indipendenza). A royal palace has always occupied the high ground here, above medieval Palermo. Originally built by the Saracens, the palace was enlarged considerably by the Normans, under whom it housed the most magnificent of medieval European courts - a noted centre of poetic and artistic achievement. Sadly, there’s little left from those times in the current structure. The long front was added by the Spanish in the seventeenth century and most of the interior is now taken up by the Sicilian regional Parliament (which explains the security guards and the limited opening hours).

Of the Royal Apartments , the only part now open to the public is happily the most sumptuous, the so-called Sala di Ruggero (Mon, Fri & Sat 9am-noon; free), decorated with lively twelfth-century mosaics of hunting scenes. Descend a floor to the beautiful Cappella Palatina (Mon-Sat 9am-noon & 3-5pm, Sat 9am-noon, Sun 9-10am & noon-1pm), central Palermo’s undisputed artistic gem. The private royal chapel of Roger II, built between 1132 and 1143, its interior is immediately overwhelming - cupola, three apses and nave entirely covered in twelfth-century mosaics of outstanding quality. As usual, it’s the powerful representation of Christ as Pantocrator which dominates the senses, bolstered here by other secondary images - Christ blessing, open book in hand, and Christ enthroned, between Peter (to whom the chapel is dedicated) and Paul. Unlike the bright pictures of La Martorana the mosaics here give a single, effective impression, fully expressing the establishment that inspired their creation.

Tags: artistic achievement, baroque church, benedettini, carmine, citrus trees, cloisters, hermits, late thirteenth century, normans, palazzo dei normanni, palazzo reale, piazza indipendenza, ponticello, regional parliament, san giovanni degli eremiti, saracens, sun 9am, tiny streets, twin columns, westernmost edge