Palermo

Nine centuries of rulers in a single square

Palermo was founded by the Phoenicians around the eighth century BC, but the city you see today was made by the Arabs and the Normans. Under the emirate, in the tenth century, it was one of the great cities of the Mediterranean — chroniclers of the time counted hundreds of mosques — and when the Normans took it in 1072 they erased nothing: they took Arab craftsmen, Byzantine mosaicists and Latin architects and set them to work together. What came out exists nowhere else: Romanesque churches with red mosque domes and Byzantine gold mosaics, and inscriptions in three alphabets on the same stone. UNESCO recognised that Arab-Norman itinerary in 2015.

Then came the Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, Spanish and Bourbons, each adding a layer: the baroque oratories, the eighteenth-century palaces, the nineteenth-century theatres. Palermo does not have one old centre — it has four, the mandamenti into which it was divided by the two streets that cross at the Quattro Canti.

The four quarters

The crossing of Via Maqueda and the Cassaro — today Corso Vittorio Emanuele — is the geometric centre: at the Quattro Canti four baroque corners face each other, and a few steps away the Fontana Pretoria fills an entire square with white marble statues that Palermitans still fondly call the fountain of shame.

The Albergheria quarter holds the Palazzo dei Normanni, the Cappella Palatina with its gold mosaics and muqarnas ceiling, and the Ballarò market — the liveliest and most working-class of the three historic markets. The Kalsa, towards the sea, is the Arab quarter par excellence: here are the Gancia, Palazzo Abatellis with its Triumph of Death, and the streets where street art has taken over walls left by the bombing of 1943. The Capo and the Vucciria are the other two markets; the Vucciria is nearly dead by day and by night becomes the place where people drink outdoors among the ruins.

Outside the centre are two things worth the journey on their own: the cathedral of Monreale, eight kilometres above the city, with six thousand square metres of Byzantine mosaics — the largest medieval mosaic cycle in Europe after Hagia Sophia — and the Capuchin catacombs, where eight thousand mummified bodies stand along the corridors, dressed as they were in life. Not everyone can take that visit, and it is fair to know beforehand.

What makes Palermo different

That it is not tamed. Palermo has neither Taormina's polish nor Noto's composure: it is loud, disordered, aristocratic palaces beside gutted houses, and those who love it love it for exactly that. It is also the capital of Italian street food — pane e panelle, crocché, sfincione, arancini, and the spleen sandwich you buy at a kiosk and eat standing up. Granita and cannoli are made here as nowhere else.

And then there is the sea, which visitors often forget. Mondello, ten kilometres north, is a white sand bay between two headlands, with art nouveau bathing cabins standing in the water and Monte Pellegrino behind — Goethe called it the most beautiful promontory in the world. An hour east lies Cefalù; an hour west, Segesta and its Doric temple alone among the hills.

Practical notes

Falcone Borsellino airport at Punta Raisi is thirty-five kilometres west of the city, on a spectacular stretch of coast between the sea and the mountain; it is around forty minutes by car, and a private transfer is the most direct way into the centre with luggage. A train links the airport to the central station.

The centre is best walked, and that is the right way to do it: the markets and the quarters only make sense from inside them. Driving in the city takes nerve, and parking is scarce. The climate is fully Mediterranean: 11–16 °C in January, 16–22 °C in spring, 24–30 °C in July and August, with the sirocco occasionally bringing desert heat for two or three days. The sea at Mondello is swimmable from June to October. Restaurants keep Italian hours; the street food kiosks do not — those are open almost always.