Viaggio per immagini. Arab-norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale: From the Grand Tour to the UNESCO Recognition

The arab-norman cultural syncretism represented in the works and in the civil and religious buildings, attributable to the Byzantine, Arabic and “Latin” culture, had a strong impact in the Middle Ages, contributing to the formation of a Mediterranean koinè, a distinctive feature of the modern European-Mediterranean civilization. For thousands of years, the Mediterranean has been a region of the world in which different cultures and people met and integrated, and it cannot and must not be the dividing line between wealth and poverty, peace and war. This catalog, commissioned by the Steering Committee of the serial property “Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedral churches of Cefalù and Monreale” and realized by the UNESCO Heritage Foundation Sicily, tells the long journey of rediscovery and revaluation of the monumental itinerary that, in 2015, was included on the prestigious UNESCO Word Heritage List.