Palermo Walking Tour: Historic Markets & Authentic Street Food Experience

Beati Paoli is the name of a secretive sect thought to have existed in medieval Sicily. The sect, as described by the author Luigi Natoli in his historic novel I Beati Paoli. Whereas the novel is fictitious, Sicily's history bears some evidence that the Beati Paoli actually existed.

The Cathedral of Palermo is the most important monument of the “Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale” site inscribed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO on 2015. The Cathedral of Palermo was founded by Gualtiero Offamilio, archbishop of the town from 1169 to 1190. It was a mosque in Islamic times and converted into a cathedral church by Roberto the Guiscardo after the conquest of Palermo. Its exclusive elements are the inlays and the architectural and sculptural plastic that reflects the penetration of Romanic art and the first Gothic decorative taste in Sicily.

It is the most ancient street of Palermo. From the 16th century the street also named Via Toledo. After the unification of Italy, it was renamed Via Vittorio Emanuele II, but the old name is still in use.

Quattro Canti, or Vigliena square, is the name of the octagonal square in the intersection between the two most important streets in Palermo: via Maqueda and Cassaro (corso Vittorio Emanuele). Ancients sources refers about it as “Octagon” or “Sun’s Theatre”, because during the daylight almost one of the façades is lighten by the sun. The “Four Corners” were realized from 1609 until 1620. The shape of the square is an octagon and it’s placed in the middle of the ancient city as a perfect point of connection between the four most important districts of that period which are: Kalsa, La Loggia, Capo e Albergheria. The four façades of the buildings have four different levels. In the lowest one it is possible to see the fountains as the symbols of the four old Palermo’s main rivers: Oreto, Kemonia, Pannaria, Papireto; in the next level are shown the allegories of the four seasons represented by Eolo, Venus, Cerere and Bacchus; the middle part is decorated by the statues of Carlo V, Filippo II, Filippo III, Filippo IV; and in the last order there are the illustration of the four saints of Palermo before the arrival of Saint Rosalia (1624): Agata, Ninfa, Oliva e Cristina.