Description
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 it is a UNESCO site as part of the Arab-Norman itinerary.
The name comes from the Arabic al-Aziza, "the splendid." It stood outside the walls, inside the Genoardo, the great royal park with pavilions, gardens and pools of water. William I began it in 1165, "with extraordinary speed and enormous expense," and his son William II finished it.
The palace is a compact, symmetrical block on three levels, with three large arches on the ground floor and a row of blind arcades above. At the top runs an inscription in Kufic characters, cut at intervals in the Middle Ages to make crenellations when the building became a fortress.
The secret is ventilation. The façade faces the sea, to catch the night breezes, which passed over the large fishpond in front of the palace, grew damp and then came in through the three arches. Ventilation shafts and windows set opposite each other kept the air moving.
At its heart is the Fountain Hall, where the king received the court. It has a square plan and niches with semi-domes decorated with muqarnas, the honeycomb decoration. At the far end, under a gold-ground mosaic, water slides over a chevron-patterned marble slab and runs along a channel to the fishpond.
On the upper floors, small windows look onto the hall: from there one could follow what happened below. The first floor was a residential area, probably for the women. At the top was an open atrium, a place for summer living open to the air and light.
In the 17th century the palace changed its face: in 1635-36 Giovanni de Sandoval adapted it as a home, added a floor and destroyed the original stairs to make a grand staircase. In 1955 the State expropriated it. In 1971 some parts of the right wing collapsed, but a restoration lasting about twenty years returned it in 1991.
The complex also included a bathhouse, discovered during the restoration to the west, and a palatine chapel, farther west.
The name comes from the Arabic al-Aziza, "the splendid." It stood outside the walls, inside the Genoardo, the great royal park with pavilions, gardens and pools of water. William I began it in 1165, "with extraordinary speed and enormous expense," and his son William II finished it.
The palace is a compact, symmetrical block on three levels, with three large arches on the ground floor and a row of blind arcades above. At the top runs an inscription in Kufic characters, cut at intervals in the Middle Ages to make crenellations when the building became a fortress.
The secret is ventilation. The façade faces the sea, to catch the night breezes, which passed over the large fishpond in front of the palace, grew damp and then came in through the three arches. Ventilation shafts and windows set opposite each other kept the air moving.
At its heart is the Fountain Hall, where the king received the court. It has a square plan and niches with semi-domes decorated with muqarnas, the honeycomb decoration. At the far end, under a gold-ground mosaic, water slides over a chevron-patterned marble slab and runs along a channel to the fishpond.
On the upper floors, small windows look onto the hall: from there one could follow what happened below. The first floor was a residential area, probably for the women. At the top was an open atrium, a place for summer living open to the air and light.
In the 17th century the palace changed its face: in 1635-36 Giovanni de Sandoval adapted it as a home, added a floor and destroyed the original stairs to make a grand staircase. In 1955 the State expropriated it. In 1971 some parts of the right wing collapsed, but a restoration lasting about twenty years returned it in 1991.
The complex also included a bathhouse, discovered during the restoration to the west, and a palatine chapel, farther west.