The Zisa is a Norman palace in Palermo that looks Arab, and that is the whole point. Begun around 1165 under King William I and finished by his son, William II, it was built as a summer pleasure house outside the city walls, set in a walled park with pools and orchards that has long since vanished. The name comes from the Arabic al-Aziz, meaning the splendid, and the building is a tall, severe block of golden stone with blind arches and a long inscription in Arabic script, designed by craftsmen from across the Mediterranean working for Christian kings. It is part of the Arab-Norman Palermo group that UNESCO listed in 2015.
Inside, the ground-floor hall is the best part. In it, a fountain used to run down a marble channel into a pool in the middle of the room, and the ceiling is a vault of honeycomb stalactites, called muqarnas, a design brought from the Islamic world. The idea was to keep the room cool, since water, shade and moving air were the original air conditioning in a Sicilian summer. Today the palace houses a museum of Islamic art, which is quiet and rewarding.
Riding in Palermo is its own adventure. Traffic is dense, drivers take liberties with lanes and signals, and the old streets are narrow, cobbled and often full of parked cars. Scooters are everywhere. A bike is more practical than a car, but you need alertness and patience, and you should avoid the central zones with restricted access. Outside the city, the road to Monreale climbs in a few bends through hillside suburbs to the cathedral with its golden mosaics, and beyond lies a beautiful countryside of olives, vineyards and stony hills.
The Zisa is about two kilometres from the centre, in a residential district, and there is parking in the streets around it. With some 650,000 people, Palermo has fuel stations on every ring road and countless cafés. Stop for a granita with a brioche, the Sicilian breakfast, or for arancine, fried rice balls with fillings of meat or butter and peas. The heat of midday is severe in summer, so go early and take shelter in the shade of the palace.