The Palazzo dei Normanni (Norman Palace) is also called Royal Palace of Palermo. It was the seat of the Kings of Sicily with the Hauteville dynasty and served afterwards as the main seat of power for the subsequent rulers of Sicily. Since 1946 it has been the seat of the Sicilian Regional Assembly. The building is the oldest royal residence in Europe; and was the private residence of the rulers of the Kingdom of Sicily and the imperial seat of Frederick II and Conrad IV. The palace stands in the highest point of the ancient centre of the city, just above the first Punic settlements, whose remains can still be found in the basement. read more…
Mondello is a small borough of the city of Palermo in the autonomous region of Sicily in Southern Italy. Its beach lies between two cliffs called Mount Gallo and Mount Pellegrino. The town was originally a small fishing village situated on marshland, but at the end of the 19th century it grew into a tourist destination. A number of Liberty style villas on the seafront promenade have made it one of the gems of Art Nouveau in Europe. read more…
Palermo is a historic city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its rich history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old. Palermo is located in the northwest of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The city was founded by the Phoenicians, but named by the Ancient Greeks as Panormus meaning (Largest)Port of All(Sea). Palermo became part of the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire and eventually part of the Byzantine Empire, for over a thousand years. From 827 to 1071 it was under Arab rule during the Emirate of Sicily when it first became a capital. Following the Norman reconquest, Palermo became capital of a new kingdom (from 1130 to 1816), the Kingdom of Sicily. Eventually it would be united with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Two Sicilies until the Italian unification of 1860. The population of the Palermo urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 855,285, while its metropolitan area is the fifth most populated in Italy with around 1.2 million people. In the central area, the city has a population of around 670,000 people. The inhabitants are known as Palermitans or poetically panormiti. The languages spoken by its inhabitants are the Italian language and the Sicilian dialect. read more…
