Palermo, Italy Summary

photo by gusto

In its own wide bay underneath the limestone bulk of Monte Pellegrino, and fronting the broad, fertile Conca d’Oro (Golden Shell) Valley, PALERMO is stupendously sited. Originally a Phoenician, then a Carthaginian colony, this remarkable city was long considered a prize worth capturing. Named Panormus (All Harbour), its mercantile attractions were obvious, and under Saracen and Norman rule in the ninth to twelfth centuries Palermo became the greatest city in Europe – famed for the wealth of its court, and peerless as a centre of learning. There are plenty of relics from this era, but it’s the rebuilding of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that shaped the city as you see it today.