Cefalù Cathedral

Located by the sea on the northern coast of Sicily, the town of Cefalù lies at the foot of a promontory that has been inhabited since Antiquity.

The territorial reorganization that followed the Norman conquest of Sicily included the establishment of Cefalù as a cathedral town in 1130, the year of Roger II of Hauteville’s coronation. It is around this time that the project to build the new cathedral—whose first stone was laid on Whit Sunday 1131—was developed. Roger II was heavily involved in this project, which was modified several times in his lifetime: in 1145, he arranged for porphyry coffins to be transported to the site with the idea of transforming it into a dynastic mausoleum. However, the monument remained unfinished at his death (1154) and his body was not transferred there. Roger II’s successors endeavoured to complete the project, at a time when Cefalù had lost its importance. The cathedral was only officially consecrated in 1267.

Because of the cathedral’s complex history, there’s no unanimous agreement about the details of the monument’s construction: there’s still some dispute over who was responsible for building the various parts of the edifice and when they were built. It has however been proved that the enormous, richly decorated apse does in fact correspond to the initial phases of the construction project (circa 1130–1150), whereas the facade and the nave, which are more modest, were built between 1180 and 1240.

The church has a basilical layout with three aisles that terminates in an apse, comprised of a significant transept, to which are attached two apsidioles and a very deep apse. There are two projecting towers in the corners of the façade. The external walls are decorated with various arches. Inside, the large arcades rest on reused columns surmounted by carved capitals. Although the timberwork in the central aisle is exposed, the apse is vaulted.

The apse is decorated with sumptuous mosaics, for which the monument[1] is famous. In the semi-dome of the apse there’s an imposing figure of Christ the Pantocrator, under which are represented the Virgin flanked by archangels and the Apostles. Other mosaics ornament the aisle that precedes the apse (there are angels on the ribbed vault, and there are prophets, saints, or Fathers of the Church below). The style and iconography of these works show that they were produced by Byzantine craftsmen who adapted their work to the patron(s) requirements (the bilingual inscriptions, the identities of the saints represented, and the layout is not typically Byzantine). Certain architectural elements are modelled on northern architecture, while the carved decorations in the oldest part of the edifice have been compared to contemporary Apulian works. The timberwork is decorated with paintings—these are in a poor state of conservation—by Muslim craftsmen. Finally, the presence of reused columns and the use of porphyry for the funerary monuments show obvious references to works from Antiquity.

The many sources of inspiration, which characterize the royal artistic production of Norman Sicily, are the perfect embodiment of the cosmopolitan nature of the multi-religious kingdom, where people from different cultures lived together under the supreme authority of the Norman king.