CATHEDRAL, Presentation Part I

Hi, my name’s Scott, and I’m your personal guide. Along with MyWoWo, I’d like to welcome you to one of the Wonders of the World: Palermo Cathedral, the largest and most important church in the city.

The magnificent Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, was built during the Norman period following a kind of power struggle between the king and the archbishop.

The Norman king, William II, known as the Good, wanted to have a new cathedral built in Monreale, where he intended to create a church of unprecedented splendor. The archbishop Walter Ophamil, in disagreement with the king’s decision, then decided to have the existing cathedral in Palermo demolished and replaced with a new one, even more magnificent than the Cathedral of Monreale.

This splendid new church was consecrated in 1185, and work on the building continued during the following years, with the construction of the facade and the southern portico. The building was later altered on several occasions, before the radical transformation carried out between 1781 and 1801 by Ferdinando Fuga of Florence, one of the architects most in vogue at the time, who added the chapels and altered the church’s overall appearance by adding the large dome....