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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



the; capital, op sicily 



Palermo "la felice" is a gem of a city, 

 to me second only in beauty to the pearl 

 of Ceylon, Colombo. Approached from 

 the harbor, the Concha d'Oro lies in 

 front, that shell-like plain, like a gigantic 

 garden, with Monte Pellegrino's red 

 crags on the right, Capo Zaffarano's 

 wooded heights across on the left, while 

 Monte Griffone's dark range fills the 

 background. Modern Palermo is a med- 

 ley of dark old streets and wide new ones, 

 of Moorish domes and modern marble 

 mansions, of labyrinths of alleys and a 

 broad, beautiful Marina, while no other 

 city of its size possesses such splendid 

 parks and public and private gardens. 



"Panormus" — all harbor — was the an- 

 cients' name of Palermo, which would in- 

 dicate its Greek origin, though from 

 earliest inscriptions there is good author- 

 ity for believing it a Chaldean colony to 

 begin with. Whatever its stem, its Greek, 

 Roman, Gothic, Saracenic, and Norman 

 occupations have left marked traces on 

 the City of the Golden Shell. 



The most exquisite jewel in Palermo's 

 casket is the Capella Palatina, built at the 

 command of Roger, Sicily's first Norman 

 king, and son of Count Roger d'Haute- 

 ville the Cortez and Pizarro of his time. 

 It is a melody of mosaic art, this chapel 

 in Palermo's royal palace. Not an -inch 

 of the surface — floor, walls, cupola, or 

 roof — but is gemmed with exquisite 

 work. Its colors are softened and 

 blended with age, until it suggests some 

 Oriental sheik's tent of cashmere em- 

 broidery. Beside the pulpit stands a 

 very ancient carved white candelabrum 

 14 feet high, and near the choir steps 

 swings a magnificent repousse silver 

 lamp, gifts of King Roger to this 

 jewelled chapel his fairy wand created. 

 It was in this chapel that Marie Amelie, 

 daughter of Ferdinand IV of Naples, was 

 married to Louis Philippe, then Duke of 

 Orleans, afterward king of the French. 

 The splendid pyx was presented by him 

 on attaining the throne. 



The Saracenic conquerors have left 

 their trace in the palaces of La Ziza and 



La Cuba, and in La Cubola, the latter a 

 small vaulted pavilion in the gardens of 

 La Cuba, and the most perfect Saracenic 

 work in Sicily. The palaces are barracks 

 now and their beauties have vanished, but 

 at La Cuba it was that di Procida found 

 his lost love, as described by Boccaccio. 



The structure about which perhaps 

 centers the greatest interest is the pictur- 

 esque ruined church of San Giovanni 

 Degli Eremite, built by King Roger, and 

 possibly partially constructed from some 

 old mosque, for there are five round 

 cupolas of the same form that one sees 

 in all Mohammedan countries. Moor and 

 Norman are dust and ashes and the 

 lovely cloisters where the monks once 

 paced and meditated are only a garden 

 now. Within sight of San Giovanni, out- 

 side Porta Santa Agatha, is an old ceme- 

 tery, and inside its walls the remains of 

 a Cistercian monastery founded by the 

 English Archbishop Walter of the Mill. 

 Grim legends haunt this place. On Eas- 

 ter Tuesday, 1282, while the monastery 

 bell rang for vespers, occurred that gory 

 massacre known as the Sicilian vespers, 

 the slaughter of the French. From Pal- 

 ermo the fury spread over all the island 

 until thousands of the French were slain, 

 and Charles of Anjou lost from his 

 crown his "jewel of the Mediterranean. ,T 



Mafia and bandits and brigands are 

 popularly supposed to flourish in Sicily, 

 but a carriage trip into the heart of the 

 mountains, to the town which is still 

 Greek, Piano dei Greci, failed to furnish 

 adventure or a modern Claude du Val! 

 The inhabitants of this mountain town 

 are Albanian still, Orthodox Greek in 

 religion, and retaining some hints of 

 Greek peasant dress. We proved quite 

 as much of a sight to the mountaineers 

 as they to us, and so closely did they 

 crowd about the camera that snap-shots 

 were made with difficulty. 



Above the city of Palermo, on a cliff 

 almost overhanging the Concha d'Oro, 

 stands that triumph of ecclesiastic build- 

 ers, the Cathedral of Monreale, Santa 

 Maria Nuova, the greatest monument to 

 the glory of William the Good and his 



