Walking on the floor of the hall, made of limestone basalt and consisting of stone elements from different quarries, including the lumachella extracted from the Rocca di Cefalù, we can see, in the aisles, some funerary and sculptural movements that embellished the Church in the centuries following ...

The main façade, rising to the west, is enclosed between two imposing square towers with a pyramid-shaped apex. They are a reminder of its original function as Ecclesia Munita, a fortress church, with a series of multi-level walkways, now uncovered, built within the thickness of the walls, connecti...

At first glance, the western façade of the Cathedral has a compositional structure that is independent from the rest of the building, as if it were a fortress and a transversal link to the two towers surrounding it. The massive vertical momentum of the towers and the fact that they belong to the ...

The Cefalù Cathedral stands out on a terrace perched on the imposing rock mass stretching out towards the sea and embraced by the jagged peaks of the Sicilian Apennines between the Nebrodi and Madonie mountains. If we look at the rest of the landscape, a sequence of silhouettes comes to life, built...

Among the scenes sculpted in the capitals, the "dedication" is of great symbolic significance. Mirroring what is already depicted in the mosaic cycle in the apse area of the Cathedral, King William is depicted kneeling while offering and giving the model of the Cathedral as a gift to the Child, seat...

The mosaics in the central aisle, with scenes from the Old and New Testaments, as well as the interplay of columns running through the interior of the cathedral, seem to accompany the faithful on a salvific journey through the presbytery, culminating in the Christocentric King of Kings, Christ Panto...

Sparkling and precious, the entire mosaic mantle of the interior was created by Byzantine craftsmen and local artists over a rather long period of time, between about 1177 and 1183. It follows a precise theological-dogmatic logic, starting from the mosaics of the main aisle, in which scenes from the...

Originally, the Monreale Cathedral was connected to all the surrounding buildings, from the cloister, adjacent to the right side of the church to the south, to the monastery, whose northern wing touched it. The rich external decoration of the Cathedral's three east-facing semicircular apses was link...

A building such as the Monreale Cathedral, outlined by a multiform stylistic syncretism, reflected a deep religious implication promoted by William II. The ruler succeeded in consolidating the Western Christian influence through a fruitful and peaceful dialogue with the Byzantine-Oriental and Muslim...

As Ugo Falcando carefully describes, the flourishing vegetation of the landscape of the Palermo plain in the 12th century showed colours ranging from the pink hues of the lumia flowers to the bright tones of the oranges and pomegranates, similar to the fiery streaks of timeless sunsets....