Sicily Guide

Monreale Cathedral is the greatest of all the monuments to the wealth and artistic taste of the Norman kings in northern Sicily. Founded around 1170 by William II, and dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the church was elevated to the rank of a metropolitan cathedral in 1182. The outside of the Arab-Norman cathedral is plain, except the aisle walls and three eastern apses, which are decorated with intersecting pointed arches and other ornaments inlaid in marble. The archiepiscopal palace and monastic buildings on the south side were of great size and magnificence, and were surrounded by a massive precinct wall, crowned at intervals by twelve towers. This has been mostly rebuilt, but little now remains except ruins of some of the towers, a great part of the monks’ dormitory and frater, and the splendid cloister, completed about 1200.