Palermo sights

Quattro Canti - "Quattro Canti" (Four Corners) is the nickname for old Palermo's dead-center intersection. The concave corner facades stack on top of their fountains three sculptural levels symbolizing the Seasons, above them the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and on top the patronesses of the city...

Piazza Pretoria - This square at the center of town is centered on a Mannerist fountain sculpted for a Florentine villa in the 1550s but rejected by its commissioners, scandalized by the racy nude figures and lewd glances these statues were throwing each other across the water jets...

La Martorana - La Martorana (a.k.a. Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio) may have a baroque facade, but this mosaicked church dates to the 1140s–50s. Aside from some minimal baroque redecoration and 1717 frescoes by Borremans, the interior is pure glittering gold-back mosaic...

San Cataldo- A picturesque little ex-church by La Martorana fronted by palm trees and topped by pink, mosque-like domelets...

Galleria Regionale di Palazzo Abatellis - This 15th-century, Catalan-Gothic-meets-Renaissance palazzo houses one of the best art museums in Sicily, well worth an hour or two of your time...

Palazzo Mirto - Most of Palermo's glorious and famed 18th- and 19th-century palazzi are rotting behind their massive doors, but this one is open to the public for a glimpse into the lifestyle of Palermo's wealthy caste in past few centuries...

Museo delle Marionette- This is one of the world's largest collections of puppets, documenting a cultural and artistic craft heritage that spans the globe from Javanese stick puppets, Indonesian silhouettes, and Chinese dolls to Neapolitan Pulcinella (Punch and Judy) hand puppets and, of course, Sicilian marionettes...

Serpotta's Stuccoed Chapels - Giacomo Serpotta (1656–1732) was Palermo's master of elaborate stucco work who carried the baroque style to rococo heights (or excesses, depending on your tastes). He crafted his statues and remarkably lifelike, action-packed reliefs out of molded plaster, and surrounded them with elaborate frameworks dripping with curlicues and cherubim in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, and Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Cita (or Zita)...

Chiesa di San Francesco d'Assisi- This medieval church, with a 1302 sawtooth-designed portal and rose window on the facade, gives you a good compare-contrast overview of the Gagini clan of sculptors, as well as works by 18th-century stucco master Serpotta, and the first significant Renaissance work in Sicily, an arch sculpted by Francesco Laurana and Pietro da Bonitate in 1468...

Il Gesù (Chiesa della Casa Professa) - This 16th-century Jesuit church was heavily baroqued in the 17th and 18th centuries with a ton of inlaid marble and sculptures...

Cattedrale (Cathedral)- Oddly, Palermo's cathedral is not the city's greatest church. It is a hodgepodge of styles rather uncomfortably knitted together, from the original 1185 Norman structure (visible in the towers and apses at the east end), through the 15th-century Catalan-Gothic overhaul, to the incongruous 1801 baroque dome inflicted upon it by Ferdinando Fuga (who also revamped the interior)...

Palazzo dei Normanni- Most of the royal palace itself—built by the Saracens and enlarged by the Normans and again later by the Aragonese—has been closed to visitors for years. If this policy changes, the royal apartments are little to write home about, but don't miss the mosaicked Sala di Re Ruggiero. However, even with the palace part closed, the tour buses still line up at the back, bringing visitors to file into Palermo's most stunning sight, the Byzantine Greek mosaics of the Cappella Palatina, built by Roger II in the 1130s...

San Giovanni degli Eremiti - One of the city's most romantic spots, a ruined 12th-century church and monastery complex with five unmistakable Arabo-Norman red domes is set amid luxuriant gardens...

La Zisa- William I's 1164 palace may have been built by a Norman king, but it is entirely Islamic in concept and decor—even its original name, el aziz, is Arabic for "magnificent." It is a palace of simple appearance but geometric perfection...

Catacombe del Convento dei Cappuccini- This is one of the most macabre yet fascinating sights in Italy, a plaster-walled network of high, naturally lit tunnels in whose niches lie or stand the fully dressed, mummified bodies of some 8,000 dead Palermitani, including the two-year-old "Sleeping Beauty."...

Museo Archeologico Regionale- Palermo's archaeology museum gathers artifacts from across Sicily, from prehistoric times through the Romans. The highlights are the metopes of Selinute, a series of 6th-century BC decorative friezes and the ephebe of Selinute, a 460 BC bronze tomb statuette...

Museo Etnografico Giuseppe Pitrè - This ethnographic museum in Villa Favorita park details daily Sicilian life in the 18th and 19th centuries. They've got loads of peasant costumes, religious ex votos, excellent ceramics, household and farm tools, and magic talismans that include a hen's egg stuck with 75 pins—hide this on the roof of someone you want done in; when the egg eventually breaks, the victim dies...

Monte Pellegrino- Looming impressively over north Palermo and thankfully protected as parkland, the sheer cliffs and green cradles of trees covering the 2,000-foot Monte Pellegrino headland make it look more like it belongs at Yosemite or in some Japanese silk painting than in Sicily...

Sanctuario di Santa Rosalia - The Monte Pellegrino cave in which St. Rosalia, niece of William II, lived as a religious hermit has been outfitted with pews (and a crazy spiderweb of flat metal spikes on the ceilings to catch sanctified dripping water) to become a popular pilgrimage chapel, where the holy water flows from plastic cooler jugs and all the merchandise in the gift shop has been pre-blessed for your convenience...

Monreale - This mountainside village just south of Palermo contains one of the most stunningly mosaic-clad cathedrals in Italy, beating out even the churches in Palermo itself...

Bagheria - A suburban town a sumptuous palaces and riotous statuary (and an old mafia stronghold)...

Solunto - Ruins of a Phoenician city...

La Martorana - La Martorana (a.k.a. Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio) may have a baroque facade, but this mosaicked church dates to the 1140s–50s. Aside from some minimal baroque redecoration and 1717 frescoes by Borremans, the interior is pure glittering gold-back mosaic...

San Cataldo- A picturesque little ex-church by La Martorana fronted by palm trees and topped by pink, mosque-like domelets...

Serpotta's Stuccoed Chapels - Giacomo Serpotta (1656–1732) was Palermo's master of elaborate stucco work who carried the baroque style to rococo heights (or excesses, depending on your tastes). He crafted his statues and remarkably lifelike, action-packed reliefs out of molded plaster, and surrounded them with elaborate frameworks dripping with curlicues and cherubim in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, and Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Cita (or Zita)...

Cattedrale (Cathedral)- Oddly, Palermo's cathedral is not the city's greatest church. It is a hodgepodge of styles rather uncomfortably knitted together, from the original 1185 Norman structure (visible in the towers and apses at the east end), through the 15th-century Catalan-Gothic overhaul, to the incongruous 1801 baroque dome inflicted upon it by Ferdinando Fuga (who also revamped the interior)...

Cappella Palatina (Palazzo dei Normanni) - Most of the royal palace itself—built by the Saracens and enlarged by the Normans and again later by the Aragonese—has been closed to visitors for years. If this policy changes, the royal apartments are little to write home about, but don't miss the mosaicked Sala di Re Ruggiero. However, even with the palace part closed, the tour buses still line up at the back, bringing visitors to file into Palermo's most stunning sight, the Byzantine Greek mosaics of the Cappella Palatina, built by Roger II in the 1130s...

San Giovanni degli Eremiti - One of the city's most romantic spots, a ruined 12th-century church and monastery complex with five unmistakable Arabo-Norman red domes is set amid luxuriant gardens...

Monreale - This mountainside village just south of Palermo contains one of the most stunningly mosaic-clad cathedrals in Italy, beating out even the churches in Palermo itself...

Chiesa di San Francesco d'Assisi- This medieval church, with a 1302 sawtooth-designed portal and rose window on the facade, gives you a good compare-contrast overview of the Gagini clan of sculptors, as well as works by 18th-century stucco master Serpotta, and the first significant Renaissance work in Sicily, an arch sculpted by Francesco Laurana and Pietro da Bonitate in 1468...

Il Gesù (Chiesa della Casa Professa) - This 16th-century Jesuit church was heavily baroqued in the 17th and 18th centuries with a ton of inlaid marble and sculptures...

Sanctuario di Santa Rosalia - The Monte Pellegrino cave in which St. Rosalia, niece of William II, lived as a religious hermit has been outfitted with pews (and a crazy spiderweb of flat metal spikes on the ceilings to catch sanctified dripping water) to become a popular pilgrimage chapel, where the holy water flows from plastic cooler jugs and all the merchandise in the gift shop has been pre-blessed for your convenience...

Catacombe del Convento dei Cappuccini- This is one of the most macabre yet fascinating sights in Italy, a plaster-walled network of high, naturally lit tunnels in whose niches lie or stand the fully dressed, mummified bodies of some 8,000 dead Palermitani, including the two-year-old "Sleeping Beauty."...

Santa Caterina - One of the most elaborate baroque marble-and-stucco interiors in Palermo...

San Giuseppe dei Teatini- A grand baroque interior on Piazza Pretoria...

Galleria Regionale di Palazzo Abatellis - This 15th-century, Catalan-Gothic-meets-Renaissance palazzo houses one of the best art museums in Sicily, well worth an hour or two of your time...

Palazzo Mirto - Most of Palermo's glorious and famed 18th- and 19th-century palazzi are rotting behind their massive doors, but this one is open to the public for a glimpse into the lifestyle of Palermo's wealthy caste in past few centuries...

Museo delle Marionette- This is one of the world's largest collections of puppets, documenting a cultural and artistic craft heritage that spans the globe from Javanese stick puppets, Indonesian silhouettes, and Chinese dolls to Neapolitan Pulcinella (Punch and Judy) hand puppets and, of course, Sicilian marionettes...

Palazzo dei Normanni- Most of the royal palace itself—built by the Saracens and enlarged by the Normans and again later by the Aragonese—has been closed to visitors for years. If this policy changes, the royal apartments are little to write home about, but don't miss the mosaicked Sala di Re Ruggiero. However, even with the palace part closed, the tour buses still line up at the back, bringing visitors to file into Palermo's most stunning sight, the Byzantine Greek mosaics of the Cappella Palatina, built by Roger II in the 1130s...

La Zisa- William I's 1164 palace may have been built by a Norman king, but it is entirely Islamic in concept and decor—even its original name, el aziz, is Arabic for "magnificent." It is a palace of simple appearance but geometric perfection...

Museo Archeologico Regionale- Palermo's archaeology museum gathers artifacts from across Sicily, from prehistoric times through the Romans. The highlights are the metopes of Selinute, a series of 6th-century BC decorative friezes and the ephebe of Selinute, a 460 BC bronze tomb statuette...

Museo Etnografico Giuseppe Pitrè - This ethnographic museum in Villa Favorita park details daily Sicilian life in the 18th and 19th centuries. They've got loads of peasant costumes, religious ex votos, excellent ceramics, household and farm tools, and magic talismans that include a hen's egg stuck with 75 pins—hide this on the roof of someone you want done in; when the egg eventually breaks, the victim dies...

Palazzo Abatellis (Galleria Regionale) - This 15th-century, Catalan-Gothic-meets-Renaissance palazzo houses one of the best art museums in Sicily, well worth an hour or two of your time...

Palazzo Mirto - Most of Palermo's glorious and famed 18th- and 19th-century palazzi are rotting behind their massive doors, but this one is open to the public for a glimpse into the lifestyle of Palermo's wealthy caste in past few centuries...

Palazzo dei Normanni- Most of the royal palace itself—built by the Saracens and enlarged by the Normans and again later by the Aragonese—has been closed to visitors for years. If this policy changes, the royal apartments are little to write home about, but don't miss the mosaicked Sala di Re Ruggiero. However, even with the palace part closed, the tour buses still line up at the back, bringing visitors to file into Palermo's most stunning sight, the Byzantine Greek mosaics of the Cappella Palatina, built by Roger II in the 1130s...

La Zisa- William I's 1164 palace may have been built by a Norman king, but it is entirely Islamic in concept and decor—even its original name, el aziz, is Arabic for "magnificent." It is a palace of simple appearance but geometric perfection...

Quattro Canti - "Quattro Canti" (Four Corners) is the nickname for old Palermo's dead-center intersection. The concave corner facades stack on top of their fountains three sculptural levels symbolizing the Seasons, above them the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and on top the patronesses of the city...

Piazza Pretoria - This square at the center of town is centered on a Mannerist fountain sculpted for a Florentine villa in the 1550s but rejected by its commissioners, scandalized by the racy nude figures and lewd glances these statues were throwing each other across the water jets...

La Zisa- William I's 1164 palace may have been built by a Norman king, but it is entirely Islamic in concept and decor—even its original name, el aziz, is Arabic for "magnificent." It is a palace of simple appearance but geometric perfection...

Catacombe del Convento dei Cappuccini- This is one of the most macabre yet fascinating sights in Italy, a plaster-walled network of high, naturally lit tunnels in whose niches lie or stand the fully dressed, mummified bodies of some 8,000 dead Palermitani, including the two-year-old "Sleeping Beauty."...

Monte Pellegrino- Looming impressively over north Palermo and thankfully protected as parkland, the sheer cliffs and green cradles of trees covering the 2,000-foot Monte Pellegrino headland make it look more like it belongs at Yosemite or in some Japanese silk painting than in Sicily...

Palermo's Street Markets
Markets are an integral part of Palermo life and a colorful, unmissable sight where Palermitano dialects fly through the air between the stall awnings and vendors hawk piles of silvery fish, Levi’s jeans, spiny sea urchins, bootleg CDs, olives from barrels, and steaks carved directly from the swordfish. Bring your camera (but little else) and guard it well.

There are close to a dozen markets in town; the best include the central Vucciria food market, the sprawling anything-for-sale Ballarò in the Albergheria quadrant, the Capo clothing and food market in the center, and the antiques of Piazza Peranni behind the bishop's palace off Corso V. Emanuele...

Palazzo dei Normanni- Most of the royal palace itself—built by the Saracens and enlarged by the Normans and again later by the Aragonese—has been closed to visitors for years. If this policy changes, the royal apartments are little to write home about, but don't miss the mosaicked Sala di Re Ruggiero. However, even with the palace part closed, the tour buses still line up at the back, bringing visitors to file into Palermo's most stunning sight, the Byzantine Greek mosaics of the Cappella Palatina, built by Roger II in the 1130s...

San Giovanni degli Eremiti - One of the city's most romantic spots, a ruined 12th-century church and monastery complex with five unmistakable Arabo-Norman red domes is set amid luxuriant gardens...

La Zisa- William I's 1164 palace may have been built by a Norman king, but it is entirely Islamic in concept and decor—even its original name, el aziz, is Arabic for "magnificent." It is a palace of simple appearance but geometric perfection...

La Martorana - La Martorana (a.k.a. Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio) may have a baroque facade, but this mosaicked church dates to the 1140s–50s. Aside from some minimal baroque redecoration and 1717 frescoes by Borremans, the interior is pure glittering gold-back mosaic...

San Cataldo- A picturesque little ex-church by La Martorana fronted by palm trees and topped by pink, mosque-like domelets...

Monreale - This mountainside village just south of Palermo contains one of the most stunningly mosaic-clad cathedrals in Italy, beating out even the churches in Palermo itself...

Serpotta's Stuccoed Chapels - Giacomo Serpotta (1656–1732) was Palermo's master of elaborate stucco work who carried the baroque style to rococo heights (or excesses, depending on your tastes). He crafted his statues and remarkably lifelike, action-packed reliefs out of molded plaster, and surrounded them with elaborate frameworks dripping with curlicues and cherubim in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, and Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Cita (or Zita)...

Il Gesù (Chiesa della Casa Professa) - This 16th-century Jesuit church was heavily baroqued in the 17th and 18th centuries with a ton of inlaid marble and sculptures...

Quattro Canti - "Quattro Canti" (Four Corners) is the nickname for old Palermo's dead-center intersection. The concave corner facades stack on top of their fountains three sculptural levels symbolizing the Seasons, above them the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and on top the patronesses of the city...

Piazza Pretoria - This square at the center of town is centered on a Mannerist fountain sculpted for a Florentine villa in the 1550s but rejected by its commissioners, scandalized by the racy nude figures and lewd glances these statues were throwing each other across the water jets...

Chiesa di San Francesco d'Assisi- This medieval church, with a 1302 sawtooth-designed portal and rose window on the facade, gives you a good compare-contrast overview of the Gagini clan of sculptors, as well as works by 18th-century stucco master Serpotta, and the first significant Renaissance work in Sicily, an arch sculpted by Francesco Laurana and Pietro da Bonitate in 1468...

Cattedrale (Cathedral)- Oddly, Palermo's cathedral is not the city's greatest church. It is a hodgepodge of styles rather uncomfortably knitted together, from the original 1185 Norman structure (visible in the towers and apses at the east end), through the 15th-century Catalan-Gothic overhaul, to the incongruous 1801 baroque dome inflicted upon it by Ferdinando Fuga (who also revamped the interior)...

La Martorana - La Martorana (a.k.a. Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio) may have a baroque facade, but this mosaicked church dates to the 1140s–50s. Aside from some minimal baroque redecoration and 1717 frescoes by Borremans, the interior is pure glittering gold-back mosaic...

Sanctuario di Santa Rosalia - The Monte Pellegrino cave in which St. Rosalia, niece of William II, lived as a religious hermit has been outfitted with pews (and a crazy spiderweb of flat metal spikes on the ceilings to catch sanctified dripping water) to become a popular pilgrimage chapel, where the holy water flows from plastic cooler jugs and all the merchandise in the gift shop has been pre-blessed for your convenience...

Piazza Pretoria - This square at the center of town is centered on a Mannerist fountain sculpted for a Florentine villa in the 1550s but rejected by its commissioners, scandalized by the racy nude figures and lewd glances these statues were throwing each other across the water jets...

Museo delle Marionette- This is one of the world's largest collections of puppets, documenting a cultural and artistic craft heritage that spans the globe from Javanese stick puppets, Indonesian silhouettes, and Chinese dolls to Neapolitan Pulcinella (Punch and Judy) hand puppets and, of course, Sicilian marionettes...

Serpotta's Stuccoed Chapels - Giacomo Serpotta (1656–1732) was Palermo's master of elaborate stucco work who carried the baroque style to rococo heights (or excesses, depending on your tastes). He crafted his statues and remarkably lifelike, action-packed reliefs out of molded plaster, and surrounded them with elaborate frameworks dripping with curlicues and cherubim in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, and Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Cita (or Zita)...

San Giovanni degli Eremiti - One of the city's most romantic spots, a ruined 12th-century church and monastery complex with five unmistakable Arabo-Norman red domes is set amid luxuriant gardens...

Catacombe del Convento dei Cappuccini- This is one of the most macabre yet fascinating sights in Italy, a plaster-walled network of high, naturally lit tunnels in whose niches lie or stand the fully dressed, mummified bodies of some 8,000 dead Palermitani, including the two-year-old "Sleeping Beauty."...

 

Quattro Canti - "Quattro Canti" (Four Corners) is the nickname for old Palermo's dead-center intersection. The concave corner facades stack on top of their fountains three sculptural levels symbolizing the Seasons, above them the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and on top the patronesses of the city...

Piazza Pretoria - This square at the center of town is centered on a Mannerist fountain sculpted for a Florentine villa in the 1550s but rejected by its commissioners, scandalized by the racy nude figures and lewd glances these statues were throwing each other across the water jets...

La Martorana - La Martorana (a.k.a. Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio) may have a baroque facade, but this mosaicked church dates to the 1140s–50s. Aside from some minimal baroque redecoration and 1717 frescoes by Borremans, the interior is pure glittering gold-back mosaic...

San Cataldo- A picturesque little ex-church by La Martorana fronted by palm trees and topped by pink, mosque-like domelets...

Serpotta's Stuccoed Chapels - Giacomo Serpotta (1656–1732) was Palermo's master of elaborate stucco work who carried the baroque style to rococo heights (or excesses, depending on your tastes). He crafted his statues and remarkably lifelike, action-packed reliefs out of molded plaster, and surrounded them with elaborate frameworks dripping with curlicues and cherubim in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, and Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Cita (or Zita)...

Chiesa di San Francesco d'Assisi- This medieval church, with a 1302 sawtooth-designed portal and rose window on the facade, gives you a good compare-contrast overview of the Gagini clan of sculptors, as well as works by 18th-century stucco master Serpotta, and the first significant Renaissance work in Sicily, an arch sculpted by Francesco Laurana and Pietro da Bonitate in 1468...

Il Gesù (Chiesa della Casa Professa) - This 16th-century Jesuit church was heavily baroqued in the 17th and 18th centuries with a ton of inlaid marble and sculptures...

Cattedrale (Cathedral)- Oddly, Palermo's cathedral is not the city's greatest church. It is a hodgepodge of styles rather uncomfortably knitted together, from the original 1185 Norman structure (visible in the towers and apses at the east end), through the 15th-century Catalan-Gothic overhaul, to the incongruous 1801 baroque dome inflicted upon it by Ferdinando Fuga (who also revamped the interior)...

San Giovanni degli Eremiti - One of the city's most romantic spots, a ruined 12th-century church and monastery complex with five unmistakable Arabo-Norman red domes is set amid luxuriant gardens...

Catacombe del Convento dei Cappuccini- This is one of the most macabre yet fascinating sights in Italy, a plaster-walled network of high, naturally lit tunnels in whose niches lie or stand the fully dressed, mummified bodies of some 8,000 dead Palermitani, including the two-year-old "Sleeping Beauty."...

Monte Pellegrino- Looming impressively over north Palermo and thankfully protected as parkland, the sheer cliffs and green cradles of trees covering the 2,000-foot Monte Pellegrino headland make it look more like it belongs at Yosemite or in some Japanese silk painting than in Sicily...

Sanctuario di Santa Rosalia - The Monte Pellegrino cave in which St. Rosalia, niece of William II, lived as a religious hermit has been outfitted with pews (and a crazy spiderweb of flat metal spikes on the ceilings to catch the automatically-sanctified dripping water) to become a popular pilgrimage chapel, where the holy water flows from plastic cooler jugs and all the merchandise in the gift shop has been pre-blessed for your convenience...