My Life in Travel

The trip to Sicily was planned very slightly. As already shared, we just selected the cities to go and chose the hotels/apartments we would have to stay for overnight. So for Palermo we had 3 nights booked in a fancy hotel with a nice balcony looking to the historical center of the town. But not all days were spent in Palermo. There was one wonderful day trip made on those days, about which I’ll tell you next time. But today I want to share with you the places we’ve seen, walked through and visited during our stay in this amazing city.

As mentioned, when we arrived to Palermo, it was already second half of the day (almost evening) on that day we made a real slow motion walk in the city, crossing all the streets nearby, checking what’s there, on which places we shall pay attention to come during a daytime for a visit or nice pictures. Everywhere we were walking were small or big squares and churches, or buildings decorated with statues and fountains. In my previous article I’ve mentioned about two main walking streets via Maqueda & via Vittorio Emanuele. So on the crossroad of those streets, which is also considered the center of the historic quarters of the city, you can notice a public square called Quattro Canti (lit. Four Corners), officially known as Piazza Vigliena. The interesting fact about those 4 buildings is that each fountain is topped by a figure representing a season: Spring is represented by Venus adorned with flowers; Summer and Autumn are represented respectively by Ceres, with fruits and crops, and Bacchus, while Winter is Aeolus with a lantern in her hand. The square, as well as the pedestrian streets, are always crowdy, as next to this Baroque style decorated 4 fountains you can also enjoy live music during evening hours.

Next to this crossroad is probably the most picturesque and well known square in Palermo, called Piazza Pretoria with its spectacular fountains Fontana Pretoria dating back to the 16th century. The fountain is decorated with sculptures of the Twelve Olympians and more than 50 statues of all kinds of animals, monsters, harpies, sirens and tritons. The Palermitans call it Fontana della Vergogna (Fountain of Shame), most probably because next to all those strange creatures you can see some nude statues of Mythological figures as well. Even though the fountain is well illuminated during evening hours, it’s better to come here on a daytime, to marvel all the details of this masterpiece. In front of this square there are also large steps, with 2 lion sculptures on both sides as guards, where you can always see people hanging with some soft drinks or gelatos in hands..

The square is surrounded with several churches, and one of them was Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio (AKA La Martorana) overlooking to Piazza Bellini. Unfortunately we missed this place to visit, but it is a real gem to add in your list, if you’re planning to visit Palermo. It turned out the 12th century church has a large history and incredible interior decorated with detailed mosaics. The church was initially built in Byzantine style, but during years it had influence of Islamic architecture. Even now you can see some painted inscriptions in Arabic on the walls. Since 2015, it is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale.

But the main reason we came to Piazza Pretoria was to visit the Church and Monastery of Santa Caterina d’Alessandria (It. Chiesa e monasterio di Santa Caterina d’Alessandria). The entrance of this Roman Catholic church built in the 16th century is from Piazza Bellini to where the main facade also overlooks, while from the Western facade you can see the Fontana Pretoria. When we entered the church, we were amazed with its huge size and breathtaking decorations. Every single corner of it made us speechless. The interior had a combination of Sicilian Baroque, Rococo and Renaissance styles. The church, that belongs to the cloistered monastery of the Dominican nuns, was built on a pre-existing building and was inaugurated at the end of the 16th century. The walls are all covered with marble inlay works, carvings and frescoes showing different religious topics.

There was also a monastery in the same building as the church, that was considered one of the primary monasteries of Palermo. The monastery was built after 1311 and suffered several damages even during bombing of 1943. It was one of the most important monasteries in the city during last centuries. Nuns of the Dominican order lived in the monastery under strict Papal enclosure. The last nuns left the monastery in 2014 and today it is open to the public as a museum and hosts some exhibitions as well. The corridor took us along the dormitory cells, rooms where nuns used to stay, Sacristy, small and big choirs.

The “cherry on the pie” was the cloister with a Carrara marble fountain in the center, which depicts the founding father San Domenico. It is also called Fountain of San Domenico. At a time it was a place where nuns were going around and recited the psalms. But today it is open to visitors of monastery to sit, rest and enjoy a beautiful garden. There is also a small cafe inside the monastery, just next to the cloister, from where you can buy some sweets and enjoy them under orange trees growing here.

Admission Fee for visitors:
3€ Entrance to visit the Church (and 1€ Discounted entrance to visit the church for children from 7 to 17 years old)
5€ Entrance to visit the Roof 
7€ Entrance to visit Church and Roof 
8€ Entrance to visit Monastery and Roof 
10€ Entrance to visit Church Monastery and Roof 

This was really an amazing place that you should come and see with your eyes. And I highly recommend to buy a combined ticket that will allow you to visit church, monastery and even go to the roof and enjoy a nice view to the historical center from this terrace. All the central part of the city seems to be seen from the roof, as you can go around and enjoy the view from every point. That’s also a part of the things that we try not to miss in every place that we visit. So visiting the roof is always mandatory part in our itinerary and I’m happy with it 🙂

There was another impressive building that we passed by several times and didn’t know what’s it. This is the bad side of not planning everything in advance.. Every time we passed near this building, we saw lots of students around. Then on one of the walls nearby we saw “Liceo Classico” (High School) written and thought it’s a part of this building, so didn’t even try to enter. But later it turned out this was one of the most important buildings of Palermo, the Duomo, The Cathedral of Palermo. What a pity.. In the place of this Cathedral there was a Christian basilica dating back to the 4th century. Then a Muslim Mosque was built over it between 590 and 604. And finally at the end of the 12th century this Cathedral was built by the Normans as a re-converted Christian church and today is the largest Norman Cathedral in Sicily. The architecture is also different. It is a mix of Gothic and Medieval styles due to many modifications during centuries. The entrance to the church is free, but there are also other places you can visit inside, such as Treasury, Crypts with marble sculptured sarcophaguses, Royal and Imperial Tombs and the Terrace, which is said to have the best view of Palermo. For visiting all of this places you shall pay for each or buy a combo ticket for all visits.

Ok, not everything was not planned in our trip. There was a church that was marked as one of the “places to go” in my Google Maps and it was the Chiesa del Gesù, which is also known as the Saint Mary of Jesus or the Casa Professa. It’s located in a few blocks away from Cathedral, hidden from eyes in a random place, behind residential buildings. It will take about 10 minutes to walk, but it’s definitely one of the places that you shouldn’t miss in Palermo. Gorgeous church with a majestic interior, full of breathtaking frescoes, sculptures and symbols. You may notice there the eye in the triangle which people relate to Illuminati. But it is actually a regular Christian (and not only) sign that symbolizes an eye of the God and an unlimited power of the God to see everything in the world. So called Eye of Providence or all-seeing eye. But look up at the ceiling and you will be admired with the giant painting of Jesus Christ in the middle. Inside the church there is also a museum that contains several rooms and halls, The Sacristy and The Crypt containing numerous treasures. In other words – this church is another gem to be seen.

In the evening, when it’s already dark outside, but streets are full of active people, we had nothing to do then walk the streets too. We were checking all the big and small streets and corners, looking around, enjoying the soft chill weather, when we reached a big square, where a music was heard. There was a group of people listening to music loudly and some others were dancing in the streets. And between those “dancers” we could notice people of different age, starting from a little kid to the older aged man (he could be around 70-80 y.o.). Everyone was enjoying the music and having fun around. And just behind this crowd we noticed a huge building with columns lightened up in different colors. On the next day we came back on a daytime to see this building again and it turned out to be the famous Teatro Massimo, the biggest opera house in Italy! It is also one of the largest ones in whole Europe and is well known for its perfect acoustics! It would be a really nice experience to visit it not to see the interior only, but to enjoy some music as well, to feel the magical atmosphere inside..

The day has come and we had to leave Palermo for another city trip, but before our train, we still had some time to be here. And when we were talking about how shall we spend last few hours in Palermo, our hotel receptionist asked where had we been and what saw there. And he was honestly surprised to know that we still didn’t see the Palazzo Reale or Palazzo dei Normanni (Royal palace or Norman Palace), which is a must seen place in Palermo (one along another ones from this big list). We quickly checked where is it and how much time will it take to go, check and be back, and decided to “run” to see it before leaving the city. As we were informed, this Palace was open to visitors only on weekends, as on the weekdays it is still functioning as the seat of the Sicilian Regional Assembly since 1946. All we could see there was the 17th century courtyard of the seat of the Kings of Sicily. The building is the oldest royal residence in Europe, and was the private residence of the rulers of the Kingdom of Sicily and the imperial seat of Frederick II and Conrad IV (king of Sicily and his son). Here in this courtyard there were a lot of dogs, not real ones, but made from iron. However, they all were made in their real sizes, representing royal dogs that used to lived here.

After a very strong security check we were allowed to enter the The Palatine Chapel (Cappella Palatina), which was the royal chapel of the Norman kings of Kingdom of Sicily starting from 1132. It was situated on the second floor at the center of the Norman Palace in Palermo. The chapel is a great symbol of multi-cultural cooperation. Craftsmen of three different religious traditions worked alongside each other. It’s said that originally there were 50 windows designed to illuminate at all times of the day the stories told on the wall. The texts in the chapel are written in Greek, Arabic and Latin. Today those windows are blocked. But even without them, the interior of this chapel is amazing.

I don’t remember if I saw anything so mesmerizing before. Yes, the churches and cathedrals can be reaches one another, but this was was totally different. I didn’t notice any frescoes or paintings on the walls or ceiling. Instead they all were covered with images and writings, all made from very detailed mosaics. If you look carefully into details, you can see that even on the wooden roof, in each cell there is some picture created. I think that it would be nice to have a guide there, who could tell us all the story in very details, as I believe that each corner of this chapel had full of history to tell. Amazing!

However, we couldn’t stay there forever and had to go out, but our visit didn’t end with this. There was still a Royal Garden that we could visit. It was just outside of the building, not very big, but quite nice green area, with beautiful trees, flowers and decorations. Only the song of the birds was heard and the place was surrounded with so much peace. I wouldn’t mind to stay here for another hour, but it was time to go back to hotel for check-out and run to the train station, to meet our next adventures.

But before I tell you where did the train took us, I still have to share another beautiful trip to a lovely place, which will come soon. Be ready for another nice read very soon 🙂