The Cathedral of Monreale

Monreale is the swan-song of the art of the Norman Age. Only a few passages survive today - but these are of unrivalled splendour - in the cathedral and the cloister at Monreale. Monreale is, therefore, the culminating moment of an ideal "Itinerary of Norman Places of Artistic Interest" in Sicily, after the monuments of Cefalu and of Palermo: not the sole survivors of that age but the most significant ones. Visitors, illustrious or otherwise, have arrived here and continue to do so with increasing fervour: each one of them responding as much as it is within him to respond. But no-one, once inside the cathedral, having viewed it from the Great Door can fail to respond to the singular experience that it offers: the majesty of its architecture, the clarity of it: and the splendour of its mosaics: intrinsically fused together like notes of music in perfect concord. For the immense tapestry of coloured glass tesserae - the most extensive array in Italy - does not alter the structures of the temple but only enriches them, it bathes them in a warm wave of gold and rainbow hues, it accompanies them and leads them forward to where the enormous bust of Christ with arms outspread as if to contain the universe, speaks,