From the highest point in the capital rose the royal palace, which still retains, in spite of the transformations of eight centuries, something of the massiveness and the splendor of its Norman original, of which it preserves the great Pisan tower,--once the repository of the royal treasure,--the royal chapel, and one of the state apartments of King Roger’s time. Its terraces and gardens have long since disappeared, with their marble lions and plashing fountains which resembled the Alhambra or the great pleasure-grounds of the Mohammedan East; but we can easily call them to life with the aid of the Saracen poets and of the remains of the other royal residences which surrounded the city “like a necklace of pearls.” Here, amid his harem and his eunuchs, the officers of his court and his retinue of Mohammedan servants, the king lived much after the manner of an Oriental potentate. On state occasions he donned the purple and gold of the Greek emperors or the sumptuous vestments of red samite, embroidered with golden tigers and camels and Arabic invocations to the Christian Redeemer, which are still preserved among the treasures of the Holy Roman Empire at Vienna. And when, on festivals, he entered the palace chapel, Latin in its ground-plan, Greek and Arabic in its ornamentation, the atmosphere was likewise Oriental. As described at its dedication in 1140, with the starry heavens of its ceiling and the flowery meadows of its pavement, the chapel preserves its fundamental features to-day. Dome and choir are dominated by great Byzantine figures of Christ, accompanied by Byzantine saints and scenes with Greek inscriptions, all executed with the fullest brilliancy of which mosaics are capable, while the stalactite ceiling, “dripping with all the elaborate richness of Saracen art,” seems “to re-create some forgotten vision of the _Arabian Nights_.” Harmonious in design yet infinitely varied in detail, rich beyond belief in color and in line, reflecting alike the dim rays of its pendent lamps or the full light of the southern sun, the Cappella Palatina is the fullest and most adequate expression of the many-sided art of the Norman kingdom and the unifying force of the Norman kings. * * * * *