Lungo le Mura del Cassaro di Palermo. Studi e rilievi architettonici e proposte per il turismo culturale

Abstract

What we propose is an investigation along the perimeter circuit of the primitive city walls of Palermo, the so-called "Cassaro" or "Phoenician Foot". It is the oldest urban fortification in the city, maintained until the Islamic domination; in the IX-X century the Muslims operated the first external expansion, endowing the new quarters with a second boundary line, lighter but wider than the previous one. This second route was strengthened by the Normans and then reinforced, reshaped and bastioned in the sixteenth century: it is the perimeter that defines and identifies the Historic Center of Palermo even today, even if the circuit is legible only for pieces and only a few bastions, on the whole, they remained from the progressive dismantling of the following centuries. The oldest wall, Punic-Roman and then Arab, has also disappeared, and was incorporated into the buildings of the fourteenth-fifteenth century: it also emerges at times in sight, or it remains as a foundation structure of some palaces built on it. Some of its gates and towers have also been swallowed up by the palatial architecture that took over the route.