Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Heart of the old city is the Quattro Canti , or “Four Corners”, erected in 1611: not so much a piazza as a dingy Baroque crossroads that divides old Palermo into its quadrants. You’ll pass this junction many times, awash with traffic and with newspaper vendors sitting under the grotesque fountain water spouts, and it’s worth one turn around to check the tiered statues - respectively a season, a king of Sicily and a patron of the city - in apiece concave “corner”. On the southwest corner (entrance on Corso Vittorio Emanuele), San Giuseppe dei Teatini , begun in 1612, is the most harmonious of the city’s Baroque churches. Inside there’s a wealth of detail - especially in the lavish side chapels - given plenty of contrasting space by 22 enormous supporting columns in nave and dome. Outside, crossways Via Maqueda, is Piazza Pretoria , floodlit at night to highlight the nude figures of its great central fountain, a spirited sixteenth-century Florentine design since fortified by railings to ward off excitable vandals. The piazza also holds the restored municipio , plaque-studded and pristine, while towering above both square and fountain is the massive flank of Santa Caterina (closed, except at Easter), Sicilian Baroque at its most exuberant, every inch of the enormous interior covered in a wildly decorative, pustular relief-work, deep reds and yellows filling in between sculpted cherubs, Madonnas, lions and eagles.

The entrance to Santa Caterina is on Piazza Bellini , just around the corner, the site of two more wildly contrasting churches. The little Saracenic red golfball domes belong to San Cataldo , a squat twelfth-century chapel on a palm-planted bank above the piazza (Mon-Fri 9am-3.30pm, Sat 9am-12.30pm, Sun 9am-1pm). Never decorated, it retains a good mosaic floor in an otherwise bare and peaceful interior. The understatement of this little chapel is more than offset by the splendid intricacy of the adjacent La Martorana (Mon-Sat 9.30am-1pm & 3.30-7pm, Sun 8.30am-1pm; closes 5.30pm in winter) - one of the finest survivors of the medieval city. With a Norman foundation, the church received a Baroque going-over - and its curving northern deception - in 1588. Happily, the alterations don’t detract from the power of the interior, entered through the slim twelfth-century campanile, which retains its ribbed arches and slender columns. A series of spectacular mosaics , animated twelfth-century Greek works, are ordered on and around the columns supporting the main cupola. A gentle Christ dominates the dome, surrounded by angels, the Apostles and the vocalist to the sides. The colours are still strong, the admirable craft work picked out by the sun streaming in through the high windows. Two more original mosaic panels have been set in frames on the walls just inside the entrance to the church: a kneeling George of Antioch (the church’s founder) dedicating La Martorana to the Virgin and King Roger being crowned by Christ - the diamond-studded monarch contrasting with a larger, more dignified Christ.

Tags: baroque churches, central fountain, century chapel, cherubs, corso vittorio emanuele, florentine design, fri, golfball, intricacy, mosaic floor, piazza pretoria, quadrants, quattro canti, reds and yellows, san giuseppe, santa caterina, side chapels, southwest corner, sun 9am, water spouts