This is a bit of a cheat to be honest. The clue’s in the name “Palermo Norman Palace”, this is a palace rather than a castle. However it was built as a castle and the exterior is as functional and ugly, in fact more so, than most castles.
Visiting
I don’t really have any pictures of the palace/castle’s exterior as it was largely surrounded by other buildings but also it was just a flat sided wall with the occasional small window. It certainly retained its charm for the interior.
The main attraction of the interior of Palermo Norman Palace is the Palatine Chapel. This is, frankly, stunning and worth a visit to the city on its own. The Byzantine craftsmen that decorated the palace have created a true work of art. My travel blog for the visit in November 2019 is here and the city really was a revelation as it had a huge amount of history crammed into a small area.
The gardens of the palace were lovely to walk around and gave some good exterior views of the palace.
Tickets for the palace are purchased from a booth in a small copse of trees about 200m from the entrance. Make sure you get all the tickets in one go as there are separate tickets for each attraction. We didn’t and had to go back outside to buy tickets for the gardens …..
My Experience
My notes on Palermo Norman Palace from my blog are:
Once the bunch of screeching Italian women in front of the ticket office had dispersed I bought our tickets (€15 each) for the Cappella Palatina, Castrum Superius Royal Apartments and the Royal Gardens (an extra €4 that we didn’t find out until later and had to go out and buy them as you can’t get them at the garden entrance …..)
The first section was a long history of the city with lots of information in English and plenty of artifacts. It was fascinating to read their view of the Moslem occupation of the island. I’d always read that the Moslems ushered in a period of tolerance and coexistence but the story here was that was a myth spread in the 18th century by people unhappy with the rule of the current (Spanish?) rulers.
Moslem rule actually had all Christians paying a special tax and the island being a very run down agricultural base. There was lots on the achievements of the Norman kings and it was actually an excellent museum in its own right.
The next stop on the tour was the Royal Apartments. These were, for me, the least interesting part as I’m not really into 18th century baroque although the trompe l’oeil was excellent and the Pompeii and Chinese rooms had interesting decor.
We spent a while there as the main attraction, the Royal Chapel, didn’t open until 11. We were there for that time and went straight in. The mosaics here for fantastic, certainly exceeding those we’d seen in Byzantium itself and even Ravenna.
The room was a riot of gold and mosaics, telling the stories of Peter and Paul but in the iconic Byzantine style and with an arabic ceiling. Quite the fusion! A picture paints a thousand words so it’s better to look at the photos really! When we came out of the chapel there was a huge queue as only a small group are allowed in at any one time so the lesson is, get there early!
We walked to the gardens next but had to go back outside to buy a separate ticket then come back in which was a bit of a faff. The gardens were nothing special but were mostly quiet and peaceful to walk around and we sat down for a coffee whilst listening to chamber music, very nice.
Photo Gallery
History
Quick bit of history – Palermo was a Carthaginian settlement before the Romans conquered it in the third century BC. It then limped along under Roman rule before finally falling to the Ostrogoths as the western Roman Empire fell apart. In the sixth century the Eastern Romans (Byzantines recaptured it and it flourished again until it was conquered by the Arabs in the ninth century. The Norman Palace was built after their conquest of the island, pretty much the same time as they conquered England. And if you don’t know when that was you have no business here!
References
The Wikipedia page for the palace is here.
There isn’t an official website for the palace but this one is good. Ticket information is available here.