Palermo Airport Location Map
| Cefalù: 1 h 20 min driving average time (98.2 km) via E90 |
| Mondello: 23 min driving average time (21.5 km) via A29/E90 |
| Trapani: 58 min driving average time (85.0 km) via A29dir/E933 and A29/E90 |
| Palermo: 42 min (37.4 km) via E90 Fastest route, despite congestion on E90 causing 9-min delay |
About Palermo City
The population of the Palermo urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 855,285, while its metropolitan area is the fifth most populated in Italy with around 1.2 million people. In the central area, the city has a population of around 670,000 people. The inhabitants are known as Palermitans or poetically panormiti. The languages spoken by its inhabitants are the Italian language and the Sicilian dialect.
Palermo unlike Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan and, to some extent, Naples, is not ranking among the must-see-cities of Italy. Nevertheless for the varieties of its monuments, witnessing its long and rich history, the number of other cultural and naturalistic attractions,it can offer a very interesting experience to the visitors interested in exploring it. decorated in Palermo. Constructed between 1564–1633, it’s late date of completion resulted in an abundant use of polychrome marbles on both floors and walls. This form of decoration, which gradually evolved in Sicily from the beginning of the 17th century, was to mark the beginning of the Sicilian Baroque period, which was to give Sicily almost an architectural national identity.
Main Attractions
– the Cathedral – honey-coloured and Catalan influenced. Frederick II, Barbarossa’s son, died in 1250 and is buried here, far from his ancestral home above Hohenstaufen, Germany. Frederick’s sarcophagus is of porphyry dyed with imperial purple.
– the Quattro Canti – the symbolic crossroads at the old centre of the city and the nearby small, but pretty La Martorana church with byzantine mosaics inside.
– the Palazzo dei Normanni. Inside, don’t miss the mosaics in the Cappella Palatina and the old Royal Apartments
– the ‘street markets’, especially near the Piazza del Carmine and Vucciria.
– Monreale – a village/suburb 8 km west of Palermo, sitting on the hill with a great view back towards the city and the sea. Be sure to visit the Duomo (Cathedral) and it’s cloisters too.
– the Piazza Pretoria, including the Fontana Pretoria
– the Archaeological Museum
– the Catacombe dei Cappuccini, open daily 9AM-12 noon and 3PM-5PM, entrance is 3 euros – the catacombs of the Capuchin convent located on the Piazza Cappuccini, just west of the city centre, contain over 8000 mummified ex-residents from Palermo and its surrounding villages, some merely clothed skeletons, other remarkably well-preserved and lifelike. Well worth a visit, interesting, if slightly morbid. Children may either find it exciting or terrifying and it must be the responsibility of their parents to think carefully before taking them.