Cuba palace
The Castello della Cuba in Palermo, also known as Palazzo della Cuba, is an Arab-Norman style palace built in 1180 for the rest and entertainment of King William II. Together with the Zisa Castel, it is an example of Fatimite architecture in Sicily.
The building has a rectangular plan with four towers and its architecture suggests that it was built in such a way as to best accommodate the fresh winds and thus offer shelter from the heat, which is why it was also immersed in a lake, now drained . For this reason the palace was called by the Arabs Genoardo , Jannat al-ard, heaven on earth.
The Genoardo was part of the circuit of palaces known as Solazzi Regii , splendid palaces of the Norman court located around Palermo. The circuit of the Regi palaces also included the Cuba soprana, now incorporated in the eighteenth-century villa Di Napoli, and the Cubula , located in the ancient Genoardo royal park, the Palazzo della Zisa and the Palazzo della Favara.
In Cuba Boccaccio set one of his novellas from the Decameron, the one in which he tells the love between Gian di Procida and Restituta, a beautiful girl kidnapped to offer it as a gift to King Federico II of Aragon.
