Royal Palace in Palermo
The Palazzo dei Normanni, also known as Palazzo Reale di Palermo, houses the Palatine Chapel, enriched with wonderful mosaics and considered one of the best preserved medieval jewels in the world.
The current appearance of the building is very different from the original one: renovations, demolitions and reconstructions have profoundly changed its structure and irreparably erased its ancient appearance.
It is believed that the first construction of the palace dates back to the time of the Phoenicians who built a fortified building as a base for their trade. There is no certain information about the palace until 837, when the Arabs conquered Sicily and made this palace their stronghold. About a hundred years later the castle was abandoned, the emirs moved towards the sea and built another residence, the Castello a Mare. When in 1130 Roger II was crowned first king of Sicily, the palace-fortress was chosen by him as his residence. A series of buildings and enlargements in the Arab-Byzantine style were thus created. Unfortunately, the original plan of the building complex is irretrievably lost. Based on the testimonies of chroniclers of the time, an attempt was made to reconstruct the plan but many questions have never been answered: it is certain only that there were at least four towers all connected by walkways and other lower factories. Of these, only the Pisana tower which still stands today on the Piazza della Vittoria floor. The structure of the Pisan Tower is a square block, divided into floors and on each floor there is a central pavilion disengaged from service corridors. The geometric cut, the construction technique with small exposed ashlars without coloring, the light chiaroscuro obtained with cornices and wall facings, with a play of niches and moldings that form blind arches around the single-lancet windows recall Arabesque shapes.
Among the latter, worthy of note is the Hall of Hercules which owes its name to the frescoes painted by Velasquez representing the twelve labors of the Greek hero.
Since 1947 the building has housed the Sicilian Regional Assembly.
