Already the road leading to Monreale has something special about it. It is the long straight Corso Calatafimi that starts from the sea - like Via Vittorio Emanuele - and goes up through the city past Palermo Cathedral as far as the slopes of the Monte Caputo. Here, through a series of bends, the road leads to the little town of Monreale. This road dates from the middle of the 18th century, and is immersed in greenery and has vases along it; there is also a succession of exedras and splendid fountains in marble and other stones done by the Palermo sculptor Ignazio Marabitti and his school. The first is the Fisherman's Fountain, rich in putti and dolphins. After the first bend you see the Dragon Fountain, in a stupendous scenario, with an elegant flight of steps up to it. Further on there is the Hemicycle Fountain, in the classical style. Yet further on, there is the fountain in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.

It is possible that the history of Monreale is much more ancient than that of the cathedral. In fact there still is a place on the first slopes of Monte Caputo called 'locu vec-chio' (old place) where an older human settlement was supposed to be. Legend has it that William I, while hunting in the environs of Palermo, rested in the shade of a carob plant. He fell asleep and the Madonna appeared to him in a dream, and indicated to him a place where a treasure was hidden, which he was to use to build a church. More prosaically, historians believe that the site on which to build the wonderful cathedral, which indeed is named after Santa Maria Nuova, was chosen because it was contiguous to the oldest inhabited area there, the Pozzillo quarter, near a spring. Building the Cathedral, William I enacted a great political and strategic project, laying the foundations for tolerance and ecumenism. For the building of the Cathedral William called on Arab masons, and Byzantine and Burgundian artists and mosaicists for the cloister and the monuments. A hundred monks were sent to the new monastery from the Benedictine monastery at Cava dei Tirreni. Abbot Theobald, the first abbot at Monreale, was thus to become the archbishop of a new archdiocese which was to take on major importance in the political vicissitudes of the epoch, also being governed by outstanding families like the Medici, Farnese, Borgia, Colonna and Orsini families, and the nobles of Spain and France.

The archdiocese gradually grew in size: abbot Theobald became the seignior of three castles (Giato, Corleone and Calatrasi), and was granted vineyards, gardens, mills and tuna stations. The foundations were laid. Alongside the important abbey there arose a 'civitas', destined to become the melting-pot of a Latin-Christian civilisation in a land previously inhabited by Saracens.

The Baroque epoch witnessed the multiplication of churches together with the flourishing of activities.

The Castellaccio

The archbishop's seat and the monastery needed to be adequately defended, and so on the summit of the Monte Caputo, probably using an existing fort, in the 12th century the Normans erected the San Benedetto castle, the only example in western Sicily of a monastery-fortress. The fortress was called Castellaccio and was well armed: the ring of walls with ogival single-light windows protected the inside, organised as a monastery, a sickbay and a church. Four big cisterns, which are still usable, collected rainwater. The fort was devastated several times, especially by the Chiaramonte militias, who thus got their revenge against some friars that wanted to entrust it to the Catalans, who were their enemies. Abandoned in the ensuing centuries, it was restored in 1898 by architect Giuseppe Patricolo.

You can get to the Castellaccio up a winding path, a zigzagging mule track.

It now houses a hostel run by the Sicilian Alpine Club; there are some beds and a rustic kitchen, and you can visit it on Saturdays and Sundays.

Also worth a visit is the Aquino Roman aqueduct, 170 metres above sea level, on the road to Altofonte.

Opened in 1986, the Civic Gallery of Modern Art of Monreale, can today boast a patrimony of paintings to be respected, works of artists who have entered with full title into the history of Italian art, such as Renato Guttuso and De Chirico.

Its foundation is due to the generous donation of paintings, made by the artist Eleonora Posabella, owner of a Rome art gallery, who in this way wished to honour the memory of Giuseppe Sciortino, of Monreale, a poet, writer, art critic and artistic director of the same gallery since 1954. Later also the painter Franco Nocera donated 265 paintings by Italian artists and thus the museum now houses about 600 works of art

Art is at home in Monreale: here infact you find the Mosaic Art Institute whose pupils are the ambassadors of the world famous mosaic art

Imposing with its length of one hundred metres, magnificent with its apses decorated as blind arches, Monreale Cathedral reveals all its magnificence inside. After you go in through the main door done by Bonanno Pisano, or the no less beautiful door, done by Barisano da Trani, you find yourself dumbstruck at the walls covered with stupendous mosaics, defined a miracle of goldsmith's craft, with a surface area of six thousand three hundred square metres: polychrome and pure gold mosaics, depicting episodes from the Bible, the Creation, the Prophets and the advent of Jesus, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The perspective culminates in the Choir with the grandiose figure of Christ Pantocrator, 'with soft almond eyes, seeming to embrace time', a full twelve metres high, visible from all sides. It is an unrivalled masterpiece thanks also to its powerful communicative force, 'a hymn to the transcendental'. The roof, which is also wonderful, is the shape of a ship's keel, made up of enormous trunks sculpted with gold friezes. The icon of Mary, on which an inscription in Greek says 'all Immaculate', is in the central part of the bigger apse.

On the right there are the mausoleums with the mortal remains of William II the Good and William I the Bad, two kings with different temperaments even reflected in their sarcophagi: the former is in white marble, storied, while the second is in austere and bare dark-coloured stone. Lastly, in the crypt there is also the treasure of William II, including a thorn from Christ's crown, kept in a gold and silver reliquary. The visit continues in the Cloister, with a square plan underscored by the elegant colonnade made up of one hundred and fourteen pairs of little columns. The variety of the subjects depicted in the little columns makes this a place of reflection and prayer, whose delightful silence, as Guy de Maupassant wrote, suggests 'such a state of grace that one would like to stay there infinitely.'

The series of winding staircases, uncovered and steep, alternating with various landings and galleries, constitutes 'the terraces', another attraction of the cathedral, which, rising higher and higher, accompany the visitor up through a series of panoramas and views to be discovered, including the breathtaking vista of the Conca d'Oro plain.

Next to the cathedral there is a monumental complex which was once the seat of the Benedictine Boarding School. This place, which has splendid luminous rooms, was recently restored, and is to be used, among other things, as the seat of the Civic Modern Art Gallery, named after its first curator and director, Giuseppe Sciortino. There is an outstanding staircase inside, Baroque style, in Carrara and Billiemi marble.

Restoration has brought various features to light, like underground rooms and splendid flooring. The monumental complex also includes the Historic Archive. After you cross the big atrium you get to the elegant Belvedere, where the monks once grew vegetables and officinal plants; it is now full of centuries-old ficus trees and is dominated by a big magnolia.

Opposite the cathedral there is the entrance to the caves. These are natural cavities that run underneath the historic part of Monreale. The caves are full of stalactites and run near the phreatic layers, so that as you visit them you can hear the subdued gurgling of the underground water.

In this connection, Monreale has abundant springs and wells, and some of the water is channelled into the fine fountains done by Torres. The caves can always be visited, unless maintenance work is being done on them.

The eighteenth-century Town Hall, on the left side of the square, contains some paintings of excellent school and a painting by Antonio Pietro Novelli. Among the other things the 'Anapo at Syracuse' by Antonino Leto, nineteenth-century painter from Monreale, in the Red Room, which is for the mayor; here there is also a terracotta sculptural group of the Holy Family by Gagini. There are very fine portraits by Benedetto D'Acquisto and Pietro Novelli, as well as a painting by the Flemish artist Matthias Stomer, depicting

TRADITION AND FOLKLORE

THE PUPPET THEATRE

At Monreale a puppeteer is active: this is Enzo Rossi, who learnt the craft from the great Peppino Celano.A person with a deep knowledge of the epic celebrated in the puppet theatre, Rossi stages the epk-chivalric poems, in which he himself recites, in the Onofrio Sanicola's Puppet Theatre in via 8. D'Acquisto.

His workshop in Via Termini, where he constructs puppets for the theatre and for hobbyists, is a living expression of folk culture, a casket guarding a cultural patrimony of inestimable value.

CHRISTMAS

Faith is an element which very much characterises the Monreale community.

At Christmas shepherds go round the town playing the bagpipes, the archaic rumi insttuments, made with a windbag Irom a lamb and mouth piece solbeechwood.

The touching sound and the singsong melodies that recite the novenas, psalmodizing in front of churches, are a moving spectacle tor everyone.

THE HOLY CRUCIFIX

The feast of the HoLy Crucifix, which the people of Monreale call 'patruzzu omurusu' (loving father), is heid on the 3rd of May. The most important moments of the celebration are the Crucifix leaving the Collegiata Church and the crowded processìon through the entire old centre. On the prece-ding week, in the church hosting the Crucifix, people gather to perform deeply fek songs, accompanied by the music ofa beautiful argon,

THE BENEDICTINE ABBEY

The San Martino delie Scale abbey is an interesting monument it was founded in the 6th century by Pope eregory the Great in a deiightful holhw and destroyed by the Arabs in 820, but was rebuilt in the I4th century. It has a fine facade and a grandiose flight of steps both done by Venanzio Marvuglia.

On the refectory ceiling there is a fresco by Pietro Novelli of Daniel in the Lions' Den, At the abbey there are also pictures by Borremans and the Gangi Grippie.

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF HOLY MUSIC

The left side of the cathedral is occupìed by a grandiose organ with ten thousand reeds and six keyboards, one ofthe biggest in Europe, an instrument that inspires the internationa! festival ofsacred music held in the cathedral every November. In September there ìs an organistic Festival inside the Benedictine Abbey of Si Martino delle Scale.

You soon get to the Collegiata church, founded in the seventeenth century, where there is the Crucifix with the 'Patruzzu amurusu', who miraculously liberated the people of Monreale from the plague. Legend has it that after roses are wiped on the Crucifix they become thaumaturgic. On the third of May, the date on which the first miracle was performed, that is the end of the epidemic, there is a procession with the bier of Crucified Christ that members of the confraternity carry on their shoulders. In the little old San Vito church, which is very popular with Monreale people, two illustrious citizens are buried, Antonio Veneziano and Pietro Novelli.

In the little Piazza Vaglica there is the Collegio di Maria, with a harmonious ceramic facade with two tiers of windows. Adjacent to the College there is the Santissima Trinita church, with an unusual octagonal plan and a fine rococo high altar. The church can boast of seventeenth-century works of art and a treasure of sacred hangings, with interwoven gold and silver threads. A church, originally annexed to a cloister, is dedicated to the patron saint of Monreale, San Castrense. It is decorated with statues and stuccoes by artists of the Serpotta school unfortunately to a certain degree ruined by clumsy restorations.

With its surface area of almost 53.000 hectares, the commune of Monreale is one of the biggest in Europe. In addition to the historic part it also comprises San Martino delle Scale, which is a holiday place immersed in woods; as well as the Benedictine abbey, it also has numerous villas where a lot of Palermo people go to get a little cooler air on summer days of torrid sirocco.

Other places it includes are Pioppo, a pretty hamlet winding up the provincial road: Pezzingoli, also a holiday place; Grisi, which winds up a mountain at whose bottom there is the Grisi lake. The latter. which is completely unspoilt, has recently become famous because it was chosen as a halting place In migratory birds: waders, storks and other exemplars

September. Precisely thanks to its great extension, the Monreale territory is variegated: from the holiday places, which many Palermo people have transformed into stable residences, to the picnic areas scattered around here and there in the woods, from the Casaboli and Aglisotto pine woods near Pioppo to the conifer woods of San Martino, or the Ficuzza woods with broadleaved plants, next to the hunting lodge of Ferdinand I. Not far from the latter, on the road leading to Corleone, there is the monastery of Tagliavia, of great historical value. There are also numerous farms around which you could see -and to some extent you still see - the agricultural activity of the local people. Two hamlets for peasants were built in the Thirties, Borzellino and Borgo Schirò, recently painted by the students of the Fine Arts Academy of Palermo. Walking or driving around in the Monreale countryside you come across votive aedicules, troughs and fountains. You may also come across a shepherd making ricotta.