I should be touring the Corleone Vineyards and other wineries of Sicily, but I am so worn out from my day yesterday, I decided to take it easy. Instead I decided just to do a quick two hour tour of Palermo. So I slept in a bit then headed off the boat. I decided to hire one of the carriages that were in the plaza looking for tourists to take advantage of. I volunteered.
The streets of Palermo are extremely cute with lots of iron balconies. It's the principal city and administrative seat of the autonomous region of Sicily, Italy as well as the capital of the Province of Palermo. Palermo was founded in the 8th century BC by Phoenician tradesmen around a natural harbour on the north-western coast of Sicily. Palermo is widely considered to be one of the most conquered city in the world. Palermo is a city with monumental problems, but is also a city of almost three millennia of history, beautiful palaces and churches, colourful markets, marvelous food and a distinctive cultural identity.
The Teatro Politeama was built between 1867 and 1874. Nowadays, the town's Gallery of Modern Art is accommodated here.
The Teatro Massimo ("Greatest Theatre") was opened in 1897. Closed for renovation from 1974 until 1997, it is now carefully restored and has an active schedule. Enrico Caruso sang in a performance of La Gioconda during the opening season, returning for Rigoletto at the very end of his career.
Quattro Canti is a small place at the crossing of the ancient main roads (now: Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Via Maqueda) dividing the town into its quarters. The palaces at the corner have diagonal baroque facades so that the place gets an almost octagonal form.
The Cathedral of Palermo (a former mosque turned into a church from 1185).The church was erected in 1185 by Walter Ophamil (or Walter of the Mill), the Anglo-norman archbishop of Palermo and King William II's minister, on the area of an earlier Byzantine basilica. By all accounts this earlier church was founded by St. Gregory and was later turned into a mosque by the Saracens after their conquest of the city in the 9th century. Ophamil is buried in a sarcophagus in the church's crypt. The medieval edifice had a basilica plan with three apses, of which only some minor architectural elements survive today.
The upper orders of the corner towers were built between the 14th and the 15th centuries, while in the early Renaissance period the southern porch was added.
The Palatine Chapel is the royal chapel of the Norman kings of Sicily situated on the ground floor at the center of the Palazzo Reale in Palermo. The mosaics of the Palatine Chapel are of unparalleled elegance as concerns elongated proportions and streaming draperies of figures. They are also noted for subtle modulations of colour and luminance. The oldest are probably those covering the ceiling, the drum, and the dome. 
The shimmering mosaics of the transept, presumably dating from the 1140s and attributed to Byzantine artists, illustrate scenes from the Acts of the Apostles. Every composition is set within an ornamental frame, not dissimilar to that used in contemporaneous mosaic icons.
This is another church with a lovely interior, but I don't know the name. It was pretty.
More churches of the area... I ran out of time before I could go into all of them.
This area is known for it's ceramics and while I didn't buy anything, I really enjoyed window shopping. Some of the art on the ceramics was fantastic.
