Monreale sits on the slope of Monte Caputo, a few kilometres above Palermo, and on a clear day you can see the whole Conca d'Oro basin laid out below you, with the city and its harbour at the far end. The Normans put a king's ambition up here in the 1170s: William II built a cathedral meant to rival anything in Palermo and, not incidentally, to tweak the archbishop down in the city. Inside, the walls are covered in gold mosaic, thousands of square metres of it, with a huge Christ Pantocrator filling the apse. Byzantine craftsmen did the work, and the whole story of the Bible runs around the nave like a very slow comic strip. Go in with your helmet in hand and nothing else on your mind.
The cloister next door is the quieter treat. Its paired columns, each pair carved differently, some with mosaic inlay, are a lesson in how Norman Sicily borrowed from everybody: Arab geometry, Romanesque capitals, Byzantine gold. There is a fountain in one corner shaped like a palm-column that rarely gets a photo, and it deserves one.
Getting here is the riding part. From Palermo you climb on a road that tightens into a handful of hairpins before the old town, and the traffic is the usual Sicilian negotiation, so keep your elbows in and your mirrors honest. The streets around the cathedral are narrow and steep, parking is tight, and a bike is far easier to leave than a car. Monreale is a proper town of about twenty-two thousand people, so fuel, coffee and a sandwich are all within a few minutes, and the little shops around the square sell the local bread and sweets. Come early or late; mid-morning in season the tour buses arrive together and the nave fills.
The ride from here heads inland and south toward the Roman mosaics near Piazza Armerina, a long day through wheat hills that turn from green to straw-gold as the year goes on. Spring is lovely and autumn is gentle; July on the interior roads is a hot, dry, shadeless affair. Drink water before you leave, because the best views of the gulf are the ones you stop for.