"A golden time" Top 5 Page for this destination Palermo Favorite Tip by TheWanderingCamel

Favorite thing: Photo: "Anna, mother of the priest Grisanto...."

If you've read all the Palermo tips I've written here, you'll have gathered that there are many remarkable things about the city. For me, nothing is more remarkable, or speaks more eloquently of the most extraordinary period of the city's past, than this small stone that sits in a glass case in the little museum on the upper floors of the palace of La Zisa.

It's a tombstone that was carved in memory of a Norman-Sicilian noblewoman who died in 1148, when Palermo's greatness was at its height, when Western and Eastern Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together in a climate of acceptance that was unique. It wasn't Utopia, it was the Middle Ages, life was short, brutal and hard, The King was all-powerful and his will was law. For a few short years however, the island was blessed by being ruled by a King, Roger ll, whose grace, wisdom and sophisticated ability to adopt and use the best of all his subjects' abilities and cultures saw the flowering of a society that had no parallel then and, even today, stands out as a beacon of harmony, learning and tolerance.

We only know her as "Anna, mother of the priest Grisanto, priest to the sovereign Ruggero" (Roger). It tells us she was buried in the Great Jami (the mosque that was to become Palermo Cathedral) and from there taken by her son to the Church of San Michele Arcangelo and the chapel known as Sant’Anna, built by Grisanto in 1149. The telling thing about this stone is that Anna's story is recorded in four different languages - the languages of the four different faiths practised by the the people of 12th century Palermo - Latin ( Western Catholicism), Greek (Byzantine Orthodoxy), Arabic (Islam) and Hebrew (Judaism). The date of Anna's death is recorded in each section according to the the calendars of each of the faiths -1148 Latin, 6658 Greek, 4904 Hebrew, and 543 Arabic.

It's almost impossible to imagine that the climate this small stone speaks of, a climate that allowed the acceptance of the validity and integrity of a man's right to believe and worship God in his own way, existed on this small island in the middle of the Mediterranean 900 years ago. That it was also a time that saw the creation of magnificent art and architecture, glorious gardens planted and learning flourishing and honoured is just as amazing.

It was not to last - within 50 years of Anna's death Sicily had come under the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor and Roger's golden world was swept away in bigotry, almost constant warfare and exile. Nothing quite like it has been seen since. Maybe Camelot was really in Sicily.