Palermo and Monreale

 So here is an interesting tidbit:  Palermo is a Unesco World Heritage Site for the Arab-Norman architecture.  Not the whole city but a series of 9 sites which exemplify this architectural style.  

Here is one example:  A Catholic Church built by the Arabs, with some rather odd features:  

Basically Palermo as a city doesn’t really have a major hey day until first the Greeks, then the Arabs move in.  This was in the 9th Century, when the Fatimids made this a major port city.   And brought all the amazing engineering with them, allowing them to take the 2 rivers that hemmed in the city and detoured them underground.   Their tolerance of Byzantine Christians and Jews made the city multi cultural already and was the biggest city in Italy by 1000.  They also brought the cultivation of rice, sugarcane and oranges, as well as paper making, silk, and PASTA.  The Normans conquested (with the sanction of the Pope) in 1061, but really it took longer cuz the local Christians sided with the Arabs.  

One example of the mix of all of this is Monreale.  This cathedral 6 miles west of Palermo was built and consecrated between 1174 and 1189.  Thus a Norman, and Romanesque style building.  The outside looks like a Norman fortress but the really amazing part is the inside:  The ceilings are Byzantine but the walls and the apse are all done in mosaic.  MOSAIC.  The craftsmen and the engineers were Arab.  They put Christian images on the walls but the staggering use of mosaic tiles each around 5x5mm is stunning.  There are 2 tons of gold overlay used here.  There is a window which is Arabic,since the Normans didn’t really do windows like that.  

 

After spending the morning there we headed to the markets in Palermo and got an eyeful and nose full there.  

Then on to the Chiefs del Gesú (Jesuit church).  What a contrast.  This was built between 1590 to 1636, which while longer is still super fast.  It is a screamingly Baroque church festooned with cherubs and angels and more flourishes than is possible.  What is also amazing is that in 1943 as bomb collapsed the dome and destroyed the surrounding walls and paintings, all of which was restored in 2009.