OF THE two great cities of the northern coast of Sicily, Cefalù is, alas, now only too firmly on the tourist trail. Palermo, in its inimitable way, is not, for it still has life as a capital, albeit merely of a region. The sightseer’s time will not be wasted.
Few cities are more favoured by nature. Backed – and protected from its hinterland – by dramatic hills, the Conca d’Oro, and commanding a bay which has always boasted the best anchorage of the island, Palermo was inevitably settled in early times. The Phoenicians were followed by the Carthaginians and Rome. The Vandals were succeeded in turn by Odoacer and Theodoric, but in 535 Belisarius conquered the city for Byzantium. The Arabs prevailed in 831, to be defeated in their turn by the Normans in 1072. Palermo became their capital. The Norman kings built up one of the most efficient states of the time and their architectural contribution was immense. Their kingdom was inherited by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, whose heirs were driven out in 1266 by Charles of Anjou. Sicily subsequently passed to the kings of Aragon, who first appointed a viceroy in 1415, and was a dependency of Spain until 1712. After a brief period of Savoyard rule, Sicily became the subsidiary kingdom of the Neapolitan Bourbons, Palermo serving as their capital while Naples itself was occupied by the French in 1798–9 and 1806–15. From 1815 the kingdom was styled ‘of the two Sicilies’. As a result of Garibaldi’s dramatic incurson, Palermo – and with it the whole island – passed to the kingdom of Italy in 1860. Areas of the city near the port were tragically affected by Allied bombing in 1943.
The old city is only a kilometre wide and a kilometre and a half deep, and the threads that link Palermo’s past are so interwoven that at the risk of double-tracking it makes sense to explore the city stratum by stratum. Count Roger II was a determined builder. In 1130, the year of his coronation, he initiated work on the Cappella Palatina of the former Palazzo Reale (now the Palazzo dei Normanni), which was greatly extended during Spanish rule in the seventeenth century. The chapel shows how cosmopolitan the new king’s taste was. Egyptian granite was reused and the ceiling of the nave is of Fatimid construction. But if Roger turned to the Arab world in this respect, for the mosaics of the upper walls and the nave he looked to Byzantium. A brief walk to the east is the austere church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti, also built for Roger II; this incorporated part of an earlier mosque. If time permits, this is the point at which to see two other royal buildings, both in walking distance of the Palazzo dei Normanni. The Zisa and the Cuba were in the Norman kings’ huge park, the first begun by William I and completed by his eponymous successor (1165–7), the second undertaken by William II in 1180. As with the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina, Fatimid Cairo was the inspiration for these sophisticated summer retreats, which somehow still defy the encroachment of the modern town.
Roger II’s admiral, Giorgio of Antioch, was also a notable builder. He built the Martorana, Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, in the Piazza Bellini at the heart of the early city. Much of the structure and the distinguished campanile survive; so do the glorious mosaics, which, like those commissioned for the king, are Byzantine in taste. Next to the church is San Cataldo, built about 1160 for another admiral, Majone di Bari. The greatest church of Norman Palermo was of course the cathedral, Santa Rosalia, roughly midway between the Piazza Bellini and the Palazzo dei Normanni. This was begun in 1184, but work continued over a long period, and the interior was remodelled in 1781–1801. The main entrance from the piazza, of 1429–30, is a masterpiece of the late Gothic style, while the royal tombs, now crammed into the chapels to the left of this, are unexpectedly moving.
The later medieval and Renaissance churches and palaces of Palermo are perhaps less memorable. The early sixteenth-century Santa Maria della Catena by the port mixes late Gothic Catalan forms with Renaissance motifs in a characteristically Sicilian way. More surprising is the Carrara marble fountain in the central Piazza Pretoria. Executed in 1554–5 by Francesco Camilliani for a Florentina villa, this was sold a generation later and installed at Palermo.
The Piazza Pretoria abuts on the Via Maqueda, cut through the ancient city by the viceroy of that name in 1600. A few paces to the west, where it intersects the former Via Toledo, are the Quattro Canti, with four matching façades, projected in 1608 and completed in 1620. Brave the traffic, for this is an early masterpiece of baroque town planning. It serves to remind us that Spain was one of the great powers of the period, and that Palermo derived some benefit from this.
In 1624 the young Anthony van Dyck – himself a Flemish subject of the King of Spain – arrived in Palermo to receive the commission for his wonderful Madonna of the Rosary in the Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, behind the church of that saint off the Via Roma. In this sparkling canvas van Dyck came of age as a religious artist in much the same way he had recently done as a portraitist at Genoa. The oratory introduces the great genius of baroque Palermo, the stuccodore Giacomo Serpotta. His white plasterwork is of unequalled fluidity, with allegorical figures that vie with any sculptures of their date. The nearby Oratorio di Santa Cita was decorated with equal ingenuity between 1688 and 1718 by Serpotta. But his masterpiece is arguably the decoration of the Oratorio di San Lorenzo (1698–1710), from which Caravaggio’s late Nativity was so selfishly stolen in 1969. Both here and at the Oratorio del Rosario one senses Serpotta’s deep respect for the great altarpieces for which he supplied new settings.
Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico: Giovanni Serpotta, putto, plaster, c. 1701.
Palermo was notably rich in baroque and rococo palaces. Many, alas, including that of the Lampedusa family, were damaged in the Second World War. Countless façades beckon, but few of the palaces that line the main arteries can be visited, although part of one, the romantically run-down Palazzo Filingieri di Cutò on the Via Maqueda, serves as a primitive hotel.
To understand something of the taste of secular Palermo it is necessary to go outside the city. To the north, off the Parco della Favorita, projected in 1799, is the earlier Villa Niscemi, while within the park is the stylish Palazzina Cinese, built by Venanzio Marvuglia in 1799 for King Ferdinand III, then in exile from Naples. Nelson and the Hamiltons were among his visitors. Many of the great Palermitan families had villas at Bagheria to the east of the city. The town has now grown, so some effort of the imagination is necessary to imagine its former charm. Walking is the best way to see something of the villas. The most accessible is the Villa Palagonia, built in 1715 for the prince of that name and long famous for the marble-encrusted saloon and the grotesque sculptures of the enclosing walls.
Finally, visit the museums. The Museo Archeologico is at the north end of the Via Roma. In contrast to the modern museum at Siracusa, this is a very traditional institution but none the worse for that. The high point is the room of sculptures from Selinunte, including metopes from two of the temples, as well as the fifth-century BC bronze Ephebe. In the room dedicated to bronzes are the Ariel, which was placed above the main entrance of Frederick II’s Castello Maniace in Siracusa, and the Hercules from Torre del Greco, below Vesuvius, presented by King Francesco I. The Galleria Regionale is housed in the Palazzo Abatellis on the Via Alloro. The collection of Sicilian works has no rival. The star is inevitably Antonello’s small Virgin Annunciate, his quintessential masterpiece and one of the most serene and human statements of the whole Renaissance. Very different in mood is the Malvegna triptych begun by Gerard David and completed by his younger contemporary, Jan Gossart, called Mabuse. Intimate in scale and exquisite in detail, this is eloquent of Gossart’s interest in Italian art and, as a Palermitan commission, reminds us that the city remained a significant trading port.
Galleria Regionale della Sicilia: Antonello da Messina, Virgin Annunciate, 1476–7.