The Norman Palace is considered the oldest royal residence in Europe. It stands in Palermo, at the top of the Cassaro, the street that runs down to the sea, and it houses the Palatine Chapel, one of the richest places for mosaics in all of...
The Antonio Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum is Palermo's great archaeological museum: it tells the story of Sicily from prehistory to the Middle Ages, with Phoenicians, Punics, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines, and even a few guests from far...
The Martorana, or Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio, is a Norman church from 1143 on Piazza Bellini, in Palermo's historic center, famous for its gold-ground Byzantine mosaics. It is part of the Arab-Norman itinerary declared a UNESCO World Heritage...
The Cathedral of Palermo is the city's "history book": in its walls the Normans, the Catalans, the Bourbons and an Arab past that has not been erased here all live side by side. It stands on the Cassaro, the street that runs down to the sea, and...
Palazzo Abatellis is a late Gothic palace from 1495, in the Kalsa, Palermo's historic quarter, along Via Alloro. It is a splendid example of Gothic-Catalan architecture, and since 1954 it has housed the Regional Gallery of Sicily. Even if you are...
The Quattro Canti is the octagonal square that marks the center of Palermo: here the two axes of the old city cross, the Cassaro, today Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and Via Maqueda. The four curved façades, one for each corner, form a Baroque stage...
San Giovanni degli Eremiti is a Norman church in Palermo that looks as if it had come out of an Eastern city: tuff cubes crowned with red domes, a cloister with a garden and an unusual calm for the city center. It is a national monument and since...
The Capuchin Catacombs are an underground cemetery with about eight thousand mummified bodies, in the basement of Palermo's Capuchin convent. They are striking, in their own way moving, and since the days of the Grand Tour they have been a...
The Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy and one of the largest in Europe, third in size after the Paris Opéra and the Vienna State Opera. It stands in Palermo, between the old city and the 19th-century one, with a Greco-Roman...
The Regional Gallery of Sicily is Palermo's great picture gallery: it gathers the island's art from the 12th to the 17th century, with masterpieces by Antonello da Messina, sculptors such as Laurana and the Gagini, and artists from elsewhere,...
The Antonio Pasqualino International Puppet Museum is Palermo's museum devoted to Sicilian pupi, to puppets and marionettes from all over the world. More than five thousand pieces, from pupi to shadow figures, automata and stage machines, tell...
San Cataldo is a small 12th-century Norman church next to Piazza Bellini, in Palermo's historic center. It is one of the iconic images of medieval Palermo: a sandstone cube crowned by three red domes, with blind arches in Islamic taste. Since...
The Oratory of the Rosary of Santa Cita is a small prayer hall in Palermo, next to the church of Santa Cita, and it holds one of the masterpieces of the sculptor Giacomo Serpotta: a white stucco decoration that fills every wall. Outside it is...
The Pretoria Fountain is the great fountain of Piazza Pretoria, in the center of Palermo, in front of the Palazzo Pretorio: a pyramid of basins, stairs and balustrades populated by statues of gods, tritons, nymphs and monsters. Palermitans call...
The Zisa is a summer palace of the Norman kings, in Palermo, built in the 12th century with an Arab art that surprises today: it was a building designed to stay cool without air conditioning. Since 1991 it has housed the Museum of Islamic Art and...
The Oratory of the Rosary of San Domenico is a 17th-century prayer hall in Palermo, on Via dei Bambinai, near the Vucciria and next to the church of San Domenico. It holds an altarpiece by Van Dyck and the stuccoes of Giacomo Serpotta, and its...
The Church of San Domenico is, after the Cathedral, Palermo's second most important religious building, in the La Loggia district. Since 1853 it has been the pantheon of illustrious Sicilians: Giovanni Falcone and the author of The Leopard rest...
The Church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo, in the heart of the Kalsa, is a large Gothic church with no roof: soaring arches and, instead of a vault, the sky. It was never finished, and that is exactly what makes it one of the most evocative places...
The Botanical Garden of Palermo, a stone's throw from the Kalsa and next to Villa Giulia, is one of the city's best-loved gardens: ten hectares with over 12,000 plant species, neoclassical buildings, ponds and giant trees. The right place for a...
The Oratory of San Lorenzo, in the Kalsa next to the Basilica of San Francesco, is a small hall that looks like a jewel box: its walls are covered with stuccoes by Giacomo Serpotta, perhaps the high point of his art. It was the seat of a lay...
The Church of the Gesù, better known as Casa Professa, is one of the most important churches of Sicilian Baroque, in the Albergheria district. Outside it is stern, inside it is an explosion of colored marbles, stuccoes and frescoes: few places in...
Ballarò is the oldest historic market in Palermo, in the heart of the Albergheria. Every day it fills the streets from Piazza Casa Professa to the bastions of Corso Tukory, toward Porta Sant'Agata: crowded stalls, wooden crates on the asphalt,...
The Parco della Favorita, at the foot of Monte Pellegrino, is Palermo's green lung: about 400 hectares, the city's largest garden and the fourth largest park in Italy. Born as a royal estate of the Bourbons, today it is a city park.
Two...
Via Roma is a long straight street in Palermo, linking the Central Station to the Politeama Theater and cutting the historic center in two. It was opened between the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s and is the city's great "modern"...
The Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri, in Piazza Marina, is one of the most important palaces of fourteenth-century Palermo: a massive square building with towers and battlements, born as the residence of a powerful family, then a royal palace and...
The Church of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, also called Santa Caterina delle Donne, faces Piazza Pretoria and Piazza Bellini, in the heart of Palermo. It is part of a fourteenth-century Dominican monastery, and inside it is one of the most...
The Cuba, also called the Castle or Palace of the Cuba, is an Arab-Norman pleasure pavilion built in 1180 for King William II, in the Cuba-Calatafimi district of Palermo. A rectangular stone building with tall arches, built to enjoy the cool in...
Villa Malfitano, on Via Dante, is the neoclassical villa of the Whitaker family, English merchants who came to Palermo in the 1800s. A small palace with drawing rooms and art collections and a park of rare plants: the home of a family that had...
The Palazzo Ajutamicristo, on Via Garibaldi, is a fifteenth-century noble palace: an example of Sicilian Gothic, with an arched portal, swallow-tail battlements and a large frescoed ballroom. Part of it now houses collections of sculptures and...
The Diocesan Museum of Palermo is housed in the Archbishop's Palace, next to the Cathedral: a museum of sacred art that gathers sculptures, paintings and furnishings from the city's churches, in chronological order, from the Norman era onward....
Palazzo Mirto is a house-museum in the Kalsa, Palermo's old Arab citadel: the palace of the Filangeri, princes of Mirto, furnished with furniture, chandeliers and paintings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. It shows how Palermo's...
Via Maqueda, called the Strada Nuova, is one of the most important historic streets of Palermo: a long straight axis that runs from the Teatro Massimo down to the station, cutting the center in two, among Baroque squares, noble palaces and...
The Fountain of the Genius at Villa Giulia is the fountain topped by the statue of the Genius, the guardian spirit of Palermo, at the end of the avenue that leads from the seafront entrance toward the Botanical Garden. Together with the...
The Teatro Politeama Garibaldi is Palermo's grand nineteenth-century theater, on Piazza Ruggero Settimo, where Viale della Libertà ends. It is considered the "heart" of the city, and Palermitans simply call it the Politeama, like the square...
The Museum of Islamic Art in Palermo gathers Islamic art objects from Sicily and the Mediterranean area, produced between the ninth and twelfth centuries. It is housed in the Zisa, the Arab-Norman palace west of the historic center, open as a...
The Basilica of La Magione, or Santissima Trinità del Cancelliere, is one of the oldest churches in Palermo, on the edge of the Kalsa. With its pointed arches and interlaced apses it is a distinctive example of Arab-Norman art, reached through a...
The Palazzo Pretorio, known to everyone as Palazzo delle Aquile, is Palermo's city hall, on Piazza Pretoria, a short walk from the Quattro Canti and the edge of the Kalsa. It is the ceremonial seat of the municipality and looks onto the square's...
The Cala is an inlet in the heart of Palermo: the city's oldest harbor, between Via Francesco Crispi and the Foro Italico. It is a "U"-shaped little port that opens onto the Port of Palermo, surrounded by the historic center.
The city was...
The Porta dei Greci is one of Palermo's ancient gates, on Piazza Kalsa, in the heart of the district, facing the Foro Italico. It once opened the city toward the port. Today it is absorbed into a building, but you can still recognize it from the...
The Church of Santa Cita is a large Dominican church in the Castellammare quarter of Palermo, dedicated to Zita of Lucca. The bombs of 1943 took away its side aisles, but the apse and transept are intact and hold first-rate Renaissance and...