Palermo - Who Knew? 1-16-16

We got back to Palermo last night and after getting the car parked stayed in for the evening.  So today we were up around 8:30 and after a nice breakfast out on the streets by 9:00.  It rained during the night and into the morning so the streets were damp.  But as we got out the sun showed a bit and our walk across the old part of the city was very pleasant.
Our professed goal was the Capella Palatina, created in 1130 by the Norman King Roger II, who by all accounts had the most enlightened court in all of Europe at the time. Our walk over took us right through the heart of old Palermo along one of its two major streets, the vaguely east-west Via Vittorio Emanuele and up to the former royal palace.  Along the way however there were things to see, places to go, people to watch.  Visually Palermo is not a really pretty city, things look kind of rundown and a bit gritty.  But there are pockets of beauty and they enliven scene.  Our first diversion was to go into a baroque church and then through one of the street markets, La Vucciria, the best known of the markets. The church interior overall was kind of restrained but the side chapels were over the top Rococo.
As a bit of a reminder though, it contained the tomb of one of the Sicilian prosecutors who took on the Mafia in the 1980's and paid with his life.  His tomb was a very plain white marble slab on top of a slightly larger black marble slab, and on the black lip there must have been more than 50 pieces of paper with written notes, hopefully thanking him for his effort to make life better for the Sicilians.  La Vucciria is located in a very narrow
 street and seems to be a combination of brocantes and stalls selling fruits, vegetables, fish, spices, and meats.  It's about 2 blocks long and appeared to be just getting started as we walked through.
As I mentioned before Via Vittorio Emanuele is one main street and the other is Via Maqueda, where they intersect is literally the old center of Palermo, called the Quattro Canti (four corners?)  At each of the corners the buildings are truncated into concave facades containing a fountain and a statue of Phillip, King of Spain (the man had an ego).  It is reminiscent of some plazas in Madrid where the rulers were lauded.  Just off the Quattro Canti is an impressive fountain called, Fontana Pretoria. It was designed for a Florentine villa and somehow ended up being
moved to Palermo.  It is a tri-level fountain, circular in design with four stairways, from the lower level to the upper level, dividing it into pie shaped quadrants.  It has sculptures of nude figures all over the fountain and was called "the fountain of shame" at some point because of all the nudity.  It's lovely!

Just to the south of the fountain, in the next piazza, is located the Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio (aka La Martorana).  Built in 1143, it is a visual riot of fresco, inlaid stone, and mosaic religious iconography.  Not a large church it was built in a Greek Cross design and then later enlarged at one end to it's present size.  It combines doses of Arabic, Norman and Byzantine design into a Baroque type of assemblage that almost overwhelms the eyes.  One lovely detail is that each one of the columns in the church is a unique stone, color, or shape.  About the only thing I've seen that comes close to opulence of stonework is the Taj Mahal.  You have to sit for a while in several places to be able to take it all in.
These sites were all within a 10 minute walk of our hotel and it only took us 2 hours to get that far. Another 10 minute walk finally got us up to our goal for the day, the Capella Palatina. It is a veritable jewel box of mosaic biblical stories and superbly crafted walls and floor of inlaid semi-precious stone all from the 12th century. It is actually smaller than La Martorana because it was a private chapel but it is even more opulently decorated, if that seems
possible.  Everywhere you look there are mosaics studded with gold tiles and semi-precious stones.  The design is definitely Norman with Romanesque arches but overlaid with Byzantine opulence.  I'm running out of words to describe it.  In the cupola of the crossing and on the dome at the back chapel are images of the Christ Pantocrator (one of the names for God) in mosaic and considered to be the most iconic depiction in the Byzantine oeuvre.
Just below the upper clerestory windows running around the length of the chapel, is the Old Testament creation story, done in mosaic. Just below Christ on the back chapel is the image of  the Madonna quite beautifully rendered, and almost looking as if it were a later depiction.  And images of the saints are a dime a dozen, them and angels.  There is also a marble candelabrum in the chapel that is the oldest Romanesque work of art in all of Sicily.
One of these churches would have been the treasure of a city and in the space of half a mile we ventured into two of them. It makes me wonder what else must be hidden here waiting to dazzle the eyes.
We finally worked our way out into a sunny afternoon around 2:00 and decided it was time for lunch. So we walked back towards our hotel with directions towards a few selected restaurants supplied by the hotel.  We never were able to find the one we wanted, but I noticed a restaurant where it seemed many people were going in, so we went in too.  We must have looked like we had just arrived from Mars because we could not figure out how the restaurant worked.  We milled around for several minutes getting in peoples way until a nice gentleman said it was a self-service place.  He told me to order stuff from the woman at the counter and told Deb to grab an empty table.  So while Deb staked out a table, I went to the counter and pointed at things.  I did know that we wanted some Arancini, rice balls stuffed with meat and veg then deep fried, so I pointed at those and then at another little bunch of things that came in a minimum order of 5.  That plus a bottle of water and another of beer set up back 6 euros.  When those came we started eating and figured we better order some other things as well.  Which turned out to be a good thing as we got there just before they shut everything down for the afternoon.  I ordered us an Involtini of Swordfish and one of pork and another beer, oh and by the way save us a couple of those Panna Cotta, one with the Pistachio creme and one with the raspberry sauce.  The people were so nice, they laughed at us and we laughed at us and had a great time.  We were the last customers out and it was an experience I'll always remember.