Palermo Cathedral is one of the Normans’ most important architectural accomplishments in Southern Italy. Begun as a church, it was transformed into a mosque during the Muslim occupation (827–1061), and was then converted back to a Christian rite when the Normans conquered Palermo in 1072. Though transformed yet again in the neo-classical style in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the church that stands today is unanimously considered to be that rebuilt by Archbishop Walter i...