The Muslim conquest of Palermo dates back to 831. With the Aghlabid conquest of Palermo, the “Cassaro” took on more and more the role of a fortified stronghold. It was within the city itself and crossed by a main road axis with other roads branching out from it. These were so narrow that they were only accessible to pedestrians or to one horseman at a time. It was a market city. There was absolute distinction between public and private life. When, in 910, the Fatimid emirs gained power, a new fortified quarter was built: The Kalsa (“The Chosen”). It became the new base for the emirs.
The rest of the population, in general the poorest people, lived in the surrounding area. Land use alternated between gardens and agriculture. The “Conca d'oro” [Golden Shell] Valley underwent extraordinary agricultural development. There were citrus orchards, papyrus and cotton plants, mulberry trees for the production of silk and workshops for making writing sheets, ropes for ships and mats. Sheep farming, beekeeping and horse breeding underwent notable development.
These were two hundred years, as Amari wrote, of “civilisation and a prosperity unknown to other regions of Italy". Ibn Jubayr did not hesitate to compare Palermo to Cordoba. Edrisi, an Arab writer who lived in Palermo at the time of the Normans, described how the Arabs had left the city: "a beautiful and immense city, a great and splendid place… Palermo has buildings of such beauty that travellers set off attracted by the marvels offered by the architecture, the exquisite hustle and bustle, the decoration of many rarities discovered by art".

In 1072 the reign of the Norman kings started. This was also the time, during the age of tolerance, that Sicily made a decisive choice regarding the East. Palermo was the greatest witness to this. It was the choice of Europe. The similarity of language, culture and religious faith between the Normans and the Sicilians led to the establishment in Palermo of a convinced and full solidarity, which determined a change from how things were under the Arabs. Tolerance was nonetheless shown towards them, so much so that, in an age of fanaticism and religious wars, Arabs and Jews, Greeks and Latins lived together with reciprocal respect for their different roots, despite the fact that the Normans also followed a line of close alliance with the Church.
Robert Guiscard (The Wily) had to take responsibility for the administration of the city. He reigned with wisdom and great administrative ability. It was necessary to bring together people of various religions, languages and cultures. Therefore, norms of a public constitutional law were established which recognised the legal status of every citizen, subject to the explicit obligation to respect the law. They also had complete freedom to emigrate.
The Norman age came to an end at the close of the 12th century. Under the rule of the Swabians, first Henry VI and then the great Frederick II, Sicily became part of the imperial dream of the king. He operated on a larger political playing field, of which Sicily was only the centre. Under his reign the Sicilian Poetry School was born. This planted the seed that led to the spreading of the vernacular up to the birth of the Italian language.
The rule of the Angevins in Sicily was very brief. Upon his death, Frederick II had left the kingdom of Sicily to his youngest son Henry, but regency was entrusted to his illegitimate brother Manfred. When Henry died prematurely, Manfred assumed the crown on the 11th August 1258. Meanwhile, Charles of Anjou, who had come down to Italy and been crowned by the pope in Rome, wanted to go immediately to Palermo. At Benevento he clashed with Manfred, who died at the head of his army. On the 26th February 1266 Conradin, hastening from Germany to his aid, was defeated at Tagliacozzo and taken prisoner. Charles of Anjou had him decapitated in the market square in Naples on the 29th September 1268. It was then that the “Harsh rule” of the Anjous was installed in Sicily.
There was a popular uprising on Easter Monday 1282, as a reaction to the brutal act of a French soldier who wanted to undress a young woman. With the cry of “Death to the French” a massacre was started which spread throughout Sicily. This was the episode of the Sicilian Vespers. As a result, the crown was offered to Peter III of Aragon on the 4th September 1289.
After the peace treaty of Caltabellotta in 1302, Sicily passed into the hands of the Aragonese. In Palermo, a taxation policy was implemented to pay for the reconstruction of the port and the city walls.

In 1415 the first Aragonese Viceroy arrived in Sicily. Sicily became part of the Aragonese koine and participated in European culture through Spanish mediation.
To the town planning and buildings of the Sicilian cities, and Palermo in particular, they contributed the “prammatica” [pragmatics], a law promulgated in 1406 by King Martin. It is thanks to this law, which anticipated the concept of expropriation for public use, that the bourgeoisie were allowed to build palaces such as Aiutamicristo, Abatellis, Patella, etc.
For a century Palermo was under the rule of the Chiaramonte family, who held at bay the Catalan nobility and challenged the royal power from their castle, Steri (the name comes from “osterium”). They managed to maintain personal power, which was eventually crushed by Martin the Younger. He put an end to their ambitions by having Andrea, the last of the family, decapitated.
The people of Palermo rebelled violently against Spanish rule in 1647 (15th-22nd August), led by Giuseppe d 'Alessi. Two years later a bourgeois conspiracy attempted to eliminate the viceroy, John of Austria. After the brief reign of Amadeus of Savoy (1713-18), who obtained Sicily in the Treaty of Utrecht, the island and its main centre passed to Charles VI of Austria through the Treaty of The Hague.
In 1735 Bourbon rule started. It lasted until 1860. This was a long period marked by the excessive power of the barony and the paternalism of the Bourbons. The nobility built splendid palaces, villas and country homes of fabulous beauty. Parliament vigorously supported baronial and ecclesiastical privileges. In 1814 the Bourbons made Sicily a province of the kingdom and named a local representative. By then, the Bourbon regime had already been unpopular amongst the Sicilians for some time and occasionally revolts and riots would break out.
The first was in 1820. The movements of 1848 and 1860 saw ever wider and more popular participation. The march towards national unity had begun. Garibaldi’s epic deeds in Sicily became the people’s struggle. The thousands of young men who made up Garibaldi’s army left the mark of the convinced and generous participation of the city where the “si languages” were born, and where for too long the people had had to suffer from politics and be treated as an object.
In the new national state, Palermo, after half a century of abandonment, slowly healed its wounds. A merchant bourgeoisie built up with diffident industrial activity. The city expanded beyond the historical centre. New districts were created. Via Roma cut through the city, as provided for in the Giarrusso town-planning scheme. Following the model of the great European cities, two grand theatres were built: the Politeama the Massimo. It was the era of the Florio family, farsighted entrepreneurs, who helped to develop trade, culture and the arts and thanks to whom, in the first twenty years of the 20th century, Palermo went through a boom period, becoming a health resort known throughout Europe. Of fundamental importance to this renaissance was the work of the architect Ernesto Basile. The artists and workers who gathered around him were of the highest standard and they started the brief Art Nouveau season. The bombs of the Second World War did great damage to the city centre. In 1947, with the granting of Sicilian autonomy, Palermo became the home of the Sicilian government and the Regional Assembly.