Cefalu

The city of Cefalu lies a little less than 1/3 of the way between Palermo and Messina on the northern coast of the island. It is a bustling tourist town during the summer, but was relatively quiet for our visit. While the origins of the town are Greek, our interest was once again in the Norman period. The main cathedral in the center of town is a fine example of Sicilian Romanesque. The only remaining Byzantine mosaics are in the apse and choir, but they are considered by some to be the most original of those found on Sicily as they have been the least tampered with and restored over the centuries.

I found the windows in the upper portion of the church nearly as intriguing. If I had to guess, I would say that they definitely are of more modern origin. It was impossible to tell from ground level whether they were pieced, painted, or what. The large window at the back was particularly interesting. It was hard to get a decent picture of it and even harder to find one that reduced well for the purposes of this post.

Next to the cathedral was the first of two cloisters that we would visit on our trip. We were treated to a discussion of the structure and symbolism of the space by a docent of the cloister, but it was all in Italian. I really should learn more of the language if I want to get much out of the rest of our time here. The main discussion centered upon the double columns which ring the outer perimeter of the promenade around the open, garden space in the middle of the cloister.  

The original columns are meant to represent the four elements: earth, water, fire and air. The swirling spiral is fire, seen next to a plain replacement column.

The sawtooth is water, again next to a plain column.

Air is represented by an eight-sided column. Quite a few of them have had to be replaced. When that is done a nondescript simple column has been used. Earth is usually plain, which would make it difficult to tell the original earth columns from the replacements were it not for the obvious differences in age between the two. Another way of identifying the type of column is to look at the top which usually depicts something representative of the same element. For instance, there might be a phoenix on top of a fire column or Noah’s Ark atop water. I’m not sure what the chicken would represent, although it is probably earth based on the simple column below it.