A king of twenty-three quarrels with his own archbishop and, to strip him of power, builds himself a cathedral eight kilometres from the capital, with a diocese of its own and an abbot answerable only to him. To be sure nobody mistakes it for a makeshift, he has it lined with gold from the floor to the roof.
That is how the cathedral of Monreale came about, and the remarkable thing is that the political move worked twice: the archbishop of Palermo lost the game, and eight hundred and fifty years later people are still coming up here.
This is a guide to what you see, in the order in which it is worth looking at it. The first thing to know is not about art but about the clock, and it is in the section below.
The cathedral closes at midday, and anyone who does not know loses half the visit
How much time does Monreale really need? More than it looks, and not because of the distance.
The cathedral closes between 1 pm and 2.30 pm every day, and on Sunday morning it is reserved for services: visitors get in only from early afternoon. The cloister, which is run by the state and not by the diocese, has a longer continuous timetable.
In practice: if you leave Palermo at ten, you arrive at eleven and at one they put you out. The answer is to set off early and allow a full half-day including the journey, or to arrive at 2.30 pm and do the cloister first.
1172, and a cathedral built out of spite
William II of Hauteville, called the Good, was sixteen when he came to the throne and just past twenty when he opened this site, around 1172.
The reason was political and its name was Walter Offamilio, the archbishop of Palermo, a man who had accumulated enough power to overshadow the crown. William founded a Benedictine abbey at Monreale, obtained from the pope that it become an autonomous archiepiscopal see, and assigned it an enormous territory taken from the diocese of Palermo.
Offamilio replied by rebuilding Palermo cathedral at speed, between 1184 and 1185. The two churches are contemporaries, they are within sight of one another, and they are a monument to a quarrel.
The mosaics: how many there really are, and what they tell
Different figures circulate for the mosaic surface, and it is better to say so than to pick one: the sources give 6,240, 6,340 or 6,400 square metres, depending on how curved surfaces and remade sections are counted. Either way it is the largest mosaic cycle in Italy after St Mark’s, and one of the largest anywhere.
The programme is not decorative, it is a book. Along the nave runs the Old Testament, from the Creation to Jacob, in two superimposed registers read left to right like the lines of a page. In the side aisles and transepts are the miracles and the Passion of Christ. In the minor apses stand Saints Peter and Paul.
Every scene has its Latin caption written beside it in large characters. It was not meant for people who could read: it was meant so that the priest could point at the wall while he spoke.
The apse Pantocrator, which is as tall as a house
Why is the Christ in the apse that big? At the far end, in the semi-dome, is the figure you come for: Christ Pantocrator, right hand raised in blessing and an open book in the left.
It is enormous. The face alone measures several metres, and the blessing hand is bigger than a person. The scale is not a flourish: it is calculated so the figure stays legible and frontal from any point in the nave, even the back row, and so that it seems to look at whoever looks at it.
On the book it reads, in Greek and Latin, “I am the light of the world”. Below stand the enthroned Virgin, the angels and the ranks of saints, in a hierarchy that descends towards the ground as it moves away from the centre.
There is one detail worth seeking out, and it is political rather than religious: in one panel of the presbytery William II offers the model of the church to the Virgin, and in another he is crowned directly by Christ. No pope, no bishop in between. It is the same declaration Roger II had made for himself in the Martorana.
The cloister, a separate ticket that is worth every euro
How many columns can you look at one by one without getting bored? Leaving by the right flank you enter the Benedictine cloister, and it is worth knowing that it is not included in the cathedral-only ticket: it is run by the state and has its own desk, or sits inside the combined ticket.
It is a square of 47 metres a side, surrounded by a portico on 228 paired columns. What strikes you, and what makes this cloister studied all over the world, is that no two are alike: some plain, some fluted in a spiral, many faced with zigzag mosaic, others carved with vine scrolls.
And then there are the capitals, one to each pair, all different: biblical stories, fantastic animals, scenes of work, a whole repertoire that scholars have not finished cataloguing. You can spend an hour looking at them one by one, and that is the right way to visit.
In one corner, inside a square enclosure of columns, is the fountain: a shaft carved in scales from which water ran for the monks’ washing. Its plan is Islamic, like almost everything else in this city.
The exterior, which almost nobody walks around
Almost everyone comes in by the front and leaves. It is worth walking round the building instead and reaching the back, the apses, because that is where Arab-Norman architecture shows better than it does inside.
The three apses are covered in interlacing blind arcading of limestone, with inlays of black lava stone drawing lozenges and circles. It is the same decorative vocabulary as the Fatimid palaces of North Africa, applied to the back of a Christian cathedral, and it is the part of the building the restorations left alone.
The rest has been changed: the porch on the facade is eighteenth-century, and a fire in 1811 destroyed much of the wooden furnishing and the nave roof, both later remade.
How to get there, and how to organise the half-day
Monreale is a town of its own, eight kilometres from the centre of Palermo and some 300 metres higher, on the slopes of Monte Caputo.
You get there by city bus from the central station and from piazza Indipendenza, a run of about half an hour that at certain times becomes forty minutes. By car the time is similar, but parking in the centre of Monreale is scarce.
The arrangement I suggest: leave at 8.30, be at the cathedral by 9.15, give it an hour, move to the cloister around 10.30, and come down for lunch. Anyone arriving in the afternoon should do the reverse, cloister first and cathedral after 2.30 pm.
If you are building an itinerary, Monreale takes the morning of the second day in What to see in Palermo in 2 days.
Practical information
Checked on 3 September 2026 on the official channels of the complex and of the circuit that runs its ticketing. Prices and hours change: check again before you travel, above all the midday closure.
Tickets. There is an integrated ticket for the monumental complex at 12 euros, reduced to 9, covering the Benedictine cloister, the cathedral, the Roano chapel, the terraces and the diocesan museum. There are also separate tickets for the cloister alone and for the cathedral with the cloister. On Sunday afternoons a 6-euro ticket covers cathedral, terraces, rooms and Roano chapel.
Opening hours. The cathedral, together with the diocesan museum, the Roano chapel and the terraces, opens Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 1 pm and from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm; on Sunday only from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm, with last admission a quarter of an hour before. The cloister opens Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 7 pm and on Sundays and holidays from 9 am to 1.30 pm, with last admission half an hour before.
Where it is. In piazza Guglielmo II, in the centre of Monreale, eight kilometres from the centre of Palermo.
How long it takes. The cathedral takes an hour. The cloister asks for another if you look at the capitals as they deserve. Counting the journey from Palermo and back, allow half a day.
Photo credits: nave, mosaics, apses and exteriors by Holger Uwe Schmitt, cloister fountain by Gerd Eichmann, cloister columns and capitals by Moleskine, external decoration by José Luiz (CC BY-SA 4.0). All from Wikimedia Commons.
