PALERMO TRAVEL GUIDE: How to Feel, Eat and Live the Sicilian Capital Where Every Civilization Left Its Mark

Palermo is the most layered city in Italy, and Italy is the most layered country in Europe. In a single morning walk through its historic center you can move from a Norman cathedral built over an Arab mosque built over a Byzantine church, to a baroque piazza where the street food vendors have been selling the same preparations for generations, to an Arab-Norman palace whose gold mosaics rival Byzantium's finest, to a street market so anarchic and so alive it seems to belong to a different continent.

In this complete travel guide, Sofía Kristiansen takes you through every layer of the city: the extraordinary Cappella Palatina and the UNESCO Arab-Norman monuments, the three street markets — Ballarò, Vucciria, and the Capo — and the sfincione, panelle, and arancini sold from their carts, the Mafia history and the remarkable anti-Mafia civic movement that followed it, the baroque churches and their Serpotta stucco interiors, the day trips to Monreale, Cefalù, and Segesta, and the coastal reserves and beaches of western Sicily. Palermo does not cohere into a single image. It accumulates, layer by layer, civilization by civilization — and what it leaves behind is unforgettable.