L'Architettura normanna in Sicilia secondo Henry Gally Knight

This essay is dedicated to the figure of Henry Gally Knight, a well-known british expert of medieval architecture, who decided to reach Sicily in 1836 to complete his Norman architecture investigations, together with the architect George Moore. During his stay in the island, besides visiting more traditional landmarks of classical antiquity, Gally Knight’s specific interests will lead him not only to study prestigious architectural complexes like Monreale and Cefalù, but also to trace the medieval vestiges even of the island’s inner parts. Gally Knight’s tour and the esulting volumes he published – The Normans in Sicily: being a Sequel to “An architectural tour in Normandy”, London 1838, and Saracenic and Norman Remains, to illustrate the Normans in Sicily, London 1840 – showed up the charms of Norman civilization to scholars and travelers, and provided as well a basis for the studies on southern Middle ages and for the discussions about Gothic architecture during the following years. In this edition of "Saracenic and Norman Remains" we wanted to draw attention, through the Italian translation of the preface and description of the tables, on the part less taken into account of the volume, usually considered only the elegant iconographic repertoire accompanying the account of the trip to Sicily by Henry Gally Knight, published two years earlier. It is not only a "translation", but a critical reflection on the maturation of the historiographical thought of Gally Knight around the Sicilian medieval architecture, "Saracen" and Norman in the first instance, of which "Saracenic and Norman remains" represents a further development in relation to the European coeval debate on the birth and development of medieval architecture.