Palermo is situated on a beautiful bay, which bears a competition with that of Naples, but the situation of the city is nearly on a flat, and the mountains which encircle its noble plain, have throughout a similarity of character; both which circumstances limit, not the beauty of any particular scene, but the variety of the whole. These surrounding mountains are nevertheless finely broken and varied in their details. The highest summits may perhaps rise between three and four thousand feet, but in the back ground we distinguish, in clear weather, the vast mass of the Nebrodes, now called mountains of the Madonnia. I was led to expect, before I reached Sicily, that they always had a snowy cap, but this is not the case, though they may perhaps always preserve snow in their hollows. You enjoy this scene to great advantage from the Marina, a public promenade extending along the shore, bordered by good houses, which however, are irregularly disposed, rising mostly upon a continued terrace. At the extremity of this place the view is embellished by the fine groves of the botanic garden; beyond this we see the spacious and well cultivated plain rising gently towards the abrupt mountains I have already mentioned, which recede in successive distances, till the series is lost in the Nebrodes. In the opposite direction is Monte Pellegrino, a fine detached hill, but deficient in wood.
If an Englishman were transported in rapid succession to the bay of Naples, to Corfu, to the citadel of Athens, to Messina, and to Palermo, which would he prefer? or if he contemplated the morning sun gradually lighting up Ætna from the theatre of Taormina, would he not pronounce it finer than any of them? I have seen each at no very long interval, but I cannot decide; that which is present always seems the most beautiful, and if I give to Athens the preference, it is, perhaps, that a thrilling sensation of its past glory mingles with the emotion produced by the scenery; and certainly it is that in which the circumstances of beauty to which we are habituated in England are most deficient. There are no villages, no gentlemen’s seats; no trees near enough to be distinctly seen, except in the gray stripe of the olive-grove. No mixture of shade and cultivation; no farm-houses; no ivy-covered ruins; no running stream; no bold cliffs; and if there are high mountains, they are at such a distance, that all their asperities are softened down into an even tint. What then is there at Athens? There are the brilliant aerial tints shed over sea and land; a succession of hills of finely varied forms, with the waters of the Saronic gulf glittering among them at different distances; the mountains of the Peloponnesus; the Acropolis of Corinth; the isles of Egina and Salamis; the Piræus; the plain of Athens; and the gray olive-grove finely contrasting with the yellow hue of the plain. Nearer are the Pnyx, the Areopagus, and the remains of the Propylæa: and the white marble columns of the Parthenon, against one of which the spectator is leaning, though they hardly make part of the view, yet certainly contribute to its effect.
Palermo has two good, straight streets, crossing each other at right angles; two squares, one of which is in front of the royal palace; and the Marino, which bounds the city on the east. The rest of the town is composed of narrow, crooked and dirty streets. Indeed this was the state of the whole city till 1564, when the viceroy, Don Pedro di Toledo, began to form the two principal avenues. These are of good width; and the palaces which border them, though not of correct, are by no means of contemptible architecture. The antiquities are principally of Norman times, with one or two edifices which claim, and probably with justice, a Saracenic origin, without being of a much earlier date. To me, who have been so long examining the remains of Grecian liberty, these seem quite modern; however, some of them are of great historical value, and I shall proceed to give you a little account of them, observing by the way, that the common people of Sicily have lost all pride of their Greek ancestry, and confound in their accounts all who were not Christians, or rather Roman Catholics, under the name of Saracens; or if they acknowledge some difference of nation, they do not at all doubt that they lived about the same period, and one very wise cicerone assured me on his honour, that some of the city walls built by the said Greeks or Saracens, had been injured by the universal deluge. A priest in one of the churches maintained that one part of the building had been erected by the French; I asked at what time? At the time the Romans governed the island.
There is a Saracenic castle called Zisa, just out of Palermo; its origin indeed has been disputed, but there is a peculiarity of style in its architecture, and a correspondence with some of the buildings existing in Turkey, which leaves no doubt of the fact. The windows have been altered, except a few small, square ones in the lower part, but the wall is ornamented with obtusely pointed arches, very slightly recessed, and without ornament. The principal entrance is under a scheme arch within a very highly pointed one, which is probably an alteration. This and two others open into a corridor which has been modernized, and opposite to the middle arch of the corridor, there is a large archway opening into an ancient hall. Three sides of this hall retain their original disposition, and it is altogether the most curious part of the building. It is a square room with four recesses, one of which communicates with the corridor, as above mentioned, and gives air and light to the room. The roof is a groined and obtusely pointed vault, but without ornament; a very small shaft stands at each salient angle of each of the three recesses. There are some ornaments in mosaic in the upper part of the walls, and above these an arch, which is neither groin, vault, nor dome, but a combination of little arches, and bits of arches, so intricately disposed, that after spending three or four hours in the endeavour to express it on paper, I have been at last obliged to give it up. There is a fountain in the middle, and did the corridor open on a lawn, or into a garden, you could hardly imagine a more delightful retreat on a hot day.
Another Saracenic ruin, but at some distance from the city, is called Casteddu, i. e. Castello; the Sicilians uniformly changing double l into double d, and the terminal o into u. It is of considerable extent, and ornamented with obtusely pointed arches, and very slightly retreating faces. It also exhibits some arches nearly flat, which are probably modern; and there are small square-headed windows which belong apparently to the ancient work; and long loop-holes, which are likewise terminated by a lintel. Among the arches, some have key-stones, and others have not. Close by this building there is a smaller edifice of the same sort, and there are other remains of walls and mounds, on one of which is an old olive-tree, 12 feet in diameter at the base. These are all seated on a pool called Mare d’aquadolce, which is supplied by copious springs of fine water, rising at the foot of the mountains; and close by these springs there is another fragment, consisting of a mixture of squared stones and brickwork, and having pointed arches, which may perhaps be Saracenic.
These are the principal objects referred to Saracenic times, and though the arches are pointed, yet they can hardly be said to be edifices belonging to the pointed style of architecture. They have a character peculiarly their own, and are readily distinguished from the Norman edifices of this country. To these I now turn; and first, as is reasonable, I must say something about the Cathedral. This was founded I believe, by William the Second, called the good, in 1187. It contains the sepulchre of his grandfather Roger, first Norman king of Sicily, and of his father, William the bad. These were at first deposited in a small chapel built by Roger, which was pulled down to make way for the church. The tomb of Roger is a plain sarcophagus, composed of slabs of porphyry, under a canopy, having the form of a little temple, with four columns, and an architrave enriched with mosaics. Those of some other Sicilian princes are disposed in the same manner, but with more ornament. Considerable alterations and additions have been made at different periods to the church, and lately the artists have proceeded with a view of imitating the old style, which renders the analysis more difficult, but if there are parts certainly of more recent dates, and others very doubtful, there still remains externally a large portion undoubtedly of the original work. In the succession of slightly retreating faces, and the obtusely pointed arches, the Norman architects appear to have followed their Saracenic predecessors; they introduced a greater quantity of moulding, but still there is less of this than we should find in Norman buildings of as high a finish in France or England. They brought with them also their zigzag, of which no traces occur in the Saracenic remains; but instead of forming it by carved mouldings, it generally consists of black marble inlaid on a white, or light-coloured ground. Other Norman ornaments also occur, partly in relief, but more often in inlaid work. The western extremity has a square termination, instead of a gable; and it is flanked with a little tower at each angle, of a very whimsical taste. In the centre is a large and lofty arch, but interrupted, as in the annexed sketch.
The upper part contains a comparatively small window. The doorway below preserves its arch entire, but the external moulding is broken and recomposed in a zigzag manner. The composition has no beauty, and is certainly not coeval with the building. I cannot pretend to assign it a date, but there are in it no traces of the restoration of Roman architecture. The principal entrance is on the south side, by an open porch of three arches, and this is also an adjunct, perhaps of the fourteenth century.
There are several buildings of the middle ages in Palermo, which enable one to trace the progress of the art. The most interesting is perhaps the Church of San Niccolò della Kalsa, the tower of which abounds in inlaid work, and we may trace in it imitations, both of the Norman ornaments, and of those of Roman architecture; but the combinations of the former are more complicated than those of the cathedral. This was probably erected in the twelfth century. In the Saracenic architecture we find no carved mouldings, the artist depending entirely for their enrichments on inlaid work and mosaics. The Normans adopted this style, but applied it to their own favourite ornaments, and mixed with it carved mouldings; the carving came gradually more into use, and inlaying and mosaics diminished, and the latest example pointed out to me of the latter, is in the Palazzo de’ tribunali, erected in 1307. Even the zigzag ornament was in use till 1302, as it is exhibited in the church of St. Francis, which is of that date. The front of the church of San Niccolò della Kalsa, was probably erected after the tower, and indeed after 1306, which is the date of the earliest tomb in the church; the ornaments are less Norman, and the effect is made to depend on mouldings, and not on inlaid work. Yet the distribution is simple, and it is very far from the richness or intricacy of the portals of the French or English ecclesiastical edifices of that period.
