Palermo

The 14th century stripped much of that splendour away. By 1330 Palermo had shrunk to 51,000 people, the Black Death decimated it in 1348, and with the Aragonese kings of Sicily weak, power passed to the barons. The greatest of them, the Chiaramonte, ruled the city from their fortified palace, the Steri, and from 1377 shared the government of the island as one of the Four Vicars. In 1392 an Aragonese army came to restore royal authority, and Andrea Chiaramonte was executed in front of his own palace.

From 1412 the kings lived in Spain, and Palermo became the seat of their viceroys. Ferdinand the Catholic brought the Inquisition to Sicily in 1487, the Jews of Palermo were expelled in 1492, and in 1601 the tribunal made the old Chiaramonte palace its seat. The viceregal capital was still rebuilt with ambition: its Senate bought the Fontana Pretoria from Florence, and the Via Maqueda, opened in 1600, was laid across the old Cassaro, the two streets meeting at the Quattro Canti. When plague struck in 1624, the relics of Saint Rosalia were found on Monte Pellegrino and she became the city's patron, painted by Anthony van Dyck, who had been stranded in Palermo by the quarantine.