Udforsk Palermo

Santa Caterina is a church and former Dominican convent between Piazza Bellini and Piazza Pretoria, founded in 1310 and rebuilt between 1566 and 1596. Its interior is lined with Baroque marble inlay. Nuns lived here until 2014; since 2017 visitors can see the church, the cloister and the roof terraces, and the convent bakery sells sweets made to old recipes.

The Church of San Cataldo on Piazza Bellini was built around 1154 for Maio of Bari, chancellor of King William I, as the private chapel of his palace. Its plain stone cube with blind arches and three red domes is a work of Arab-Norman architecture. Since 1937 it has belonged to the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Martorana, or Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio, is a church on Piazza Bellini founded in 1143 by George of Antioch, admiral of King Roger II. Behind its Baroque front and Norman bell tower, the interior keeps 12th-century Byzantine mosaics. It is a co-cathedral of the Italo-Albanian Byzantine-rite Eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi.

Palermo Cathedral was built from 1185 under Archbishop Walter Ophamil on the site of an earlier basilica that had served as a mosque. Its exterior mixes Norman, Gothic and Catalan work, while the dome and the interior come from the remodelling of 1781–1801 led by Ferdinando Fuga. The royal tombs, crypt, treasury and roof are visited on a separate ticket.

The Capuchin Catacombs are burial corridors beneath the Capuchin friary of Palermo, dug from the late 16th century; the first friar was placed there in 1599. About 8,000 mummified and skeletal bodies of friars and townspeople, still in their clothes, line the walls in sections for men, women, priests and professionals.

Monreale Cathedral is the Norman cathedral of Monreale, on a hillside above Palermo, begun in 1174 by King William II of Sicily. Its interior is lined with gold-ground mosaics of Bible scenes under a Christ Pantocrator in the apse, and beside it lies the Benedictine cloister with carved paired columns. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.