Palermo (gro) The Internet portal SkyScanner has ranked Palermo among the r 15 European cities particularly worth visiting in 2015. The portal , which was founded 14 years ago and serves among other things as a search engine for air travel and hotels, points above all to the historical and cultural wealth of the Sicilian capital. Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando is pleased about the award but not surprised by it: “For years, there has been an increasing interest of tourists in our city,” said Orlando.
Founded by the Phoenicians.
It was the Phoenicians who founded Palermo in 734 BC. They successfully defended the city against the Greeks, who in the following centuries razed the rest of the island and were only driven out by the Romans. The Romans were followed by the Byzantines, then the Arabs conquered Sicily. They transformed the coastal plains into flourishing gardens through ingenious irrigation systems and Palermo into one of the most important and radiant cities of the then known world. Palermo was home to some 200 mosques 1000 years ago.
Palermo as a city of scholars.
Mathematics with the new, the Arabic numbers, the natural sciences, medical healing and literature spread northward from Palermo and provided the first “Islamization” of the Occident. After 300 years of prosperity, the Normans conquered the island. They and especially Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II furthered this development and made Palermo a highly respected scholarly city. Added to this in architecture was the “Norman architectural style”, which combines Romanesque, Arabic and Byzantine elements, a style that is only found in Sicily. No wonder vacation apartments and vacation villas in Sicily are well occupied all year round. The island has much more to offer than a clear sea and beautiful beaches.
The largest opera house in Italy.
The numerous testimonies of an eventful, over 3000-year history with the most diverse cultures makes Sicily a worthwhile destination for vacation travelers above all because the different time currents have left numerous tangible and consistently walkable traces and testimonies – up to the Spanish-influenced Sicilian Baroque and up to the neoclassical splendorous buildings of an Ernesto Basile, who created the largest opera house in Italy in Palermo with the Teatro Massimo.