A king of many peoples
In the eleventh century Norman adventurers conquered Sicily, which had been ruled by Arab emirs for more than two centuries and before that by Byzantium. In 1130 Roger II was crowned king of Sicily. His kingdom included Latin Christians, Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians and Muslims, and his court used Latin, Greek and Arabic. In 1132 he began a chapel inside his palace, on the site of an older one, and it was consecrated in 1140 and dedicated to Saint Peter.
A ceiling from the Islamic world
Look up in the nave and you see a wooden ceiling carved into hanging honeycomb cells, a form called muqarnas, typical of Islamic architecture. It is painted with hundreds of small scenes: musicians, dancers, drinkers, hunters, animals and inscriptions in Arabic script wishing the king good fortune. It is a rare survival of Islamic painting in a Christian church. Where the painters came from is debated: Fatimid Egypt, North Africa and Sicily itself have all been suggested. The ceiling belongs to the courtly art of the Islamic world described in the page on early Islamic art.
Mosaics from Byzantium
The sanctuary, with its dome, follows the language of Byzantine art. In the dome, Christ Pantocrator, the ruler of all, looks down surrounded by angels, and an inscription dates the work to 1143. Whether Roger brought mosaicists from Constantinople or employed local craftsmen trained in their methods is discussed. In the nave, mosaics with scenes from Genesis and from the lives of Saints Peter and Paul were finished later, under Roger’s son William I, with inscriptions in Latin.
The lower walls and the floor are covered with inlaid marble in geometric patterns, a technique used across the Mediterranean. At the west end, a raised platform faced the altar: here the king sat, under the mosaics of Christ, in a space that joined church and throne room.
Where to see it
The chapel is on the first floor of the Palazzo dei Normanni (Palazzo Reale) in Palermo, now the seat of the Sicilian Regional Assembly, and is visited with the palace. Since 2015 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedral churches of Cefalù and Monreale.
Sources
- Fondazione Federico II, “Cappella Palatina”.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalú and Monreale”.
- W. Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton, 1997).
- J. Johns, “The Arabic Inscriptions of the Cappella Palatina” (2011).
