No city has been taken so many times. Phoenicians, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards: each arrived as master, determined to erase what they had found and remake Palermo in their own image. And each time, the exact opposite happened—the conqueror ended up melting into the city, remaining forever in its stone, its streets, its water.
This is the story of how a city with a dozen masters became no one's, but everyone's at once. Of how it subdued, one after another, those who came to destroy it. And of the only force that, where millennia of conquerors had failed, almost succeeded in truly erasing it.
How did a city conquered endlessly, instead of losing itself, swallow up everyone who came to erase it? The answer lies in all its stone.
No city has been taken so many times. Phoenicians, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards: each arrived as master, determined to erase what they had found and remake Palermo in their own image. And each time, the exact opposite happened—the conqueror ended up melting into the city, remaining forever in its stone, its streets, its water.
This is the story of how a city with a dozen masters became no one's, but everyone's at once. Of how it subdued, one after another, those who came to destroy it. And of the only force that, where millennia of conquerors had failed, almost succeeded in truly erasing it.
How did a city conquered endlessly, instead of losing itself, swallow up everyone who came to erase it? The answer lies in all its stone.