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The mosaic and opus sectile floors cover some 3,500 m 2 and are almost unique in their excellent state of preservation due to the landslide and floods that covered the remains. [ 3 ] Although less well-known, an extraordinary collection of frescoes covered not only the interior rooms, but also the exterior walls.
The mosaics are made of glass tesserae and were executed in Byzantine style between the late 12th and the mid-13th centuries by local masters. [2] With the exception of a high dado, made of marble slabs with bands of mosaic between them, the whole interior surface of the walls, including soffits and jambs of all the arches, is covered with minute mosaic-pictures in bright colors on a gold ground.
Hector mosaic. In the first of the three rooms is a mosaic floor with scenes of the ransom of the body of Hector from Homer's epic poem, the Iliad. Only the south-west corner of the mosaic is preserved as the rest was destroyed by one of the rooms of the farm, which was later demolished in order to uncover the north section of the villa.
The rest of the mosaics, dated to the 1160s or the 1170s, are executed in a cruder manner and feature Latin (rather than Greek) inscriptions. Probably a work of local craftsmen, these pieces are more narrative and illustrative than transcendental. A few mosaics have a secular character and represent oriental flora and fauna. This may be the ...
The cathedral was built in a long-populated area, as attested by the presence of a Roman road and a Paleo-Christian mosaic. Construction began in 1131, the apse mosaics were begun in 1145, and the sarcophagi that Roger II provided for his tomb and that of his wife were put in place the same year. [ 2 ]
The city of Piazza (as it was called before 1862) developed during the Norman domination in Sicily (11th century), when Lombards settled the central and eastern part of Sicily. The area has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The city flourished during Roman times, as shown by the large mosaics at the patrician Villa Romana del Casale.
The palace contains the Cappella Palatina, [2] by far the best example of the so-called Norman–Arab–Byzantine style that prevailed in the 12th-century Sicily. The wonderful mosaics , the wooden roof, elaborately fretted and painted, and the marble incrustation of the lower part of the walls and the floor are very fine. [ 3 ]
Arabic arches and Byzantine mosaics in the Cappella Palatina of Roger II of Sicily. The heyday of mosaic making in Sicily was the age of the independent Norman kingdom in the 12th century. The Norman kings adopted the Byzantine tradition of mosaic decoration to enhance the somewhat dubious legality of their rule.