Tourist information - Palermo
Palermo is a city and seaport in Italy, capital of Palermo Province, on the northwestern coast of Sicily, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Palermo is the largest city and chief port of Sicily. It is a trading center for the island's agricultural yield and also has factories engaged in food processing, steelmaking, shipbuilding, as well as the manufacture of furniture, leather products, glass, chemicals, cement, textiles, and paper. A lot of the oldest establishments in the city date from the period when Sicily was a Norman kingdom and show Arab, Byzantine, Norman, and Spanish influences. Exceptional instances are definitely the cathedral (1169-85), the Palatine Chapel (1140), and also the Church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti (1132). The University of Palermo was established in 1777.
Palermo was founded by the Phoenicians in the 8th century BC and has been a Carthaginian colony until taken by the Romans in 254 BC. It consequently passed into the hands of the Goths (AD 440), the Byzantines (535), the Saracens (831), the Normans (1072), and also the Holy Roman emperors (1194). In 1282 it was the scene of the Sicilian Vespers, the massacre of the ruling French. Ljao/jan/1v21