The Cathedral of Palermo: from survey to historic interpretation

Abstract

The Norman kings built the Cathedral of Palermo at the end of the XII century, in the same place where an older Christian church and then a mosque were sited. Many features of the Cathedral echo the Norman churches in northern France and in England, whilst some others belong to the peculiar mixing of Norman, Muslim and Byzantine culture that characterizes the art and architecture of medieval Sicily. At the end of the XVIII century the church underwent huge and extensive transformations, that deeply altered its original shape. The historic sources that document the Medieval church are some XVIII century perspective drawings, and a textual description. The Cathedral has been surveyed with topographic and laser scanning devices; some decorative elements have been surveyed with a structured light scanner. In this study survey, 3D modelling and historic sources have been integrated for the purpose to detect the elements that survived the transformations and propose a virtual reconstruction of the state of the Cathedral before the end of the XVIII century.