La Martorana (Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio), Palermo

In 1184 the Arab traveller Ibn Jubayr, passing through Palermo, devoted page after page to one church and called it the most beautiful monument in the world. He meant the church founded by George of Antioch, admiral and chief minister of the Norman king Roger II, and known ever since as Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio, St Mary of the Admiral, or simply La Martorana. Its golden 12th-century mosaics are among the finest Byzantine work anywhere in the West.

George, a Christian from Syria, began the church around 1143, the date of its foundation charter in Greek and Arabic, and it was finished before his death in 1151; he and his wife were buried in its narthex. The original building was a compact Byzantine cross-in-square with three apses, soon extended by a narthex, a forecourt and a western bell tower with three tiers of arched openings that still serves as the entrance. The church is a mirror of Norman Sicily's mixed culture: a dedicatory frieze in Greek runs along the outer walls in a form borrowed from North African Islamic architecture, Kufic inscriptions appear on columns by the entrance, a Christian hymn painted in Arabic circles the base of the dome, and the carved wooden doors recall Fatimid craftsmanship.

Inside, Christ Pantocrator looks down from the dome, ringed by archangels, with prophets below and the evangelists in the pendentives; the vaults show the Nativity and the Dormition of the Virgin. Two panels taken from the old façade are especially famous. One shows George himself at the feet of the Virgin. The other shows King Roger II, dressed as a Byzantine emperor, being crowned directly by Christ rather than by the pope, a bold political statement with his name spelled in Greek letters.

The popular name comes from a Benedictine convent founded nearby in 1193–94 by Eloisa Martorana and joined to the church in the 15th century; the nuns added the Baroque façade and later decoration, and their marzipan fruit, frutta martorana, is still sold across Palermo. Since 1937 the church has served the Italo-Albanian community in the Byzantine rite, and since 2015 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedral churches of Cefalù and Monreale. It stands on Piazza Bellini beside the red domes of San Cataldo.

Getting there

The church is in the historic centre of Palermo, about 0.2 km from the city centre. The nearest airport is Falcone–Borsellino Airport (PMO), about 25 km away along the coast to the west.