Uscibene

Uscibene (also called Castello dell'Uscibene or Palazzo dell'Uscibene) was a castle of the Norman kings of Sicily to the west of Palermo . Like the castles of Zisa , Cuba Soprana and Cuba Sottana, it was located in the royal park outside the city, where the Altarello district is today.

history

The castle was built in the middle of the 12th century. In contemporary documents it is also called Xibene, Scibene or Sirbene, in the 19th century the castle was known as Palazzo Menani.

Over the centuries, the remains of the castle disappeared under rubble, so that they are now lying in a hollow after being uncovered.

description

Only remnants of the ground floor remain of the main building, but it was probably multi-storey. From the middle of the main facade of the castle you can get directly into the main hall, which is covered with a cross vault and has a rectangular niche on both sides and on its rear wall. The niche on the back wall was closed with a muqarnas , of which only a few traces have survived. Similar to La Zisa Castle, water flowed from a gap in the rear wall in a channel through the main hall and the entrance portal into a basin in front of the castle.

The two side niches lead to smaller side rooms, which are connected to one another via a corridor behind the main hall. A rectangular, vaulted room adjoins the side rooms on the left; on the right there are two large, roughly square rooms.

Of the chapel only the facade and a side wall structured with blind arches are preserved. Inside, parts of the former wooden ceiling can still be seen.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A. Goldschmidt (see literature) p. 563

literature

• Museum Without Borders (Ed.): Arab-Norman Art - Sicily's Culture in the Middle Ages . International cycle of exhibition streets Islamic Art in the Mediterranean, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen Berlin, 2004, ISBN 3803041023
• Hans-Rudolf Meier , The Norman Royal Palaces in Palermo. Studies on high medieval residential architecture , Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft Worms 1994, pp. 65–68, ISBN 3884629417
• Adolph Goldschmidt , Die Norman Königspaläste in Palermo , Zeitschrift für Bauwesen, Vol. 48, 1898, pp. 542–590 with illustrations on pages 56–59 in the atlas

Web links

• Picture gallery with an inside and an outside view of Uscibene (4th line)
• Lo Scibene. (pdf, 1.7 MB) In: Palermo ei suoi giardini nell'età arabo normanna. Scuola Media "Falcone e Borsellino" Lascari, pp. 61-64 , accessed on March 26, 2009 (Italian). 

Coordinates: 38 ° 6 ′ 24 ″  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 42 ″  E