Lipari

The Cathedral of Lipari and the Norman Cloister of the Benedictine Monastery

The oldest church in the Castle is the Cathedral, dedicated to St. Bartholomew , It is located in the centre of the Castle’s concourse, and was built by the Normans between 1100 and 1200. The current façade was built in 1861 together with the unfinished bell tower. The Norman cathedral was part of the convent of the Benedictine monks, of whom Ambrose was Abbot, assigned by Count Roger to Lipari in 1083 to repopulate the island, which had remained deserted after the Arab raid in 838. Remarkable parts of this Monastery remain visible, or have been brought to light by excavations.La necropoli di Lipari
Wolfgang Kronig, an expert in Norman architecture in Sicily, believed that the building did not date from 1083 but a later time, not before the age of Roger II, namely 1131, thanks to a typological comparison with similar Benedictine abbeys in Europe, the iconographic analysis of the decorations of the capitals and, finally, the system covering the ambulatory of the cloister, made with cross vaults rather than wooden trusses like in the other Norman cloisters of Sicily (Monreale, Cefalù). In the Norman construction of the Cathedral you can now visit the cloister next to the cathedral on the south side.
The reconstruction of the new cathedral in the second half of the 16th century destroyed the entire north side, but the ambulatory is preserved on the other three sides.
The ambulatory was built with stone blocks, columns and capitals recovered from the oldest houses of the Roman and medieval ages. The capitals are decorated with figures of animals (doves, lions and fantastic animals) and plant motifs (flowers and fruits), the work of Calabrian-Sicel artisans with influences from the Byzantine tradition.

Lipari, where history intertwines with volcanoes to create archaeology

The Village of Capo Graziano

Between brush strokes of sulphur and clouds of steam: the fumaroles of the port of Vulcano

Stromboli, the volcano that breathes

Salina, the green island with twin mountains

The senses tell The salt lake of Lingua

Stories of the sea and shipwrecks. The wrecks of the Aeolian Islands

Lipari at the centre of Mediterranean history

The prehistoric village of Cala Junco

The Gran Cratere of the Fossa: when the volcano becomes a sculptor

The ancient production of salt

Myths and legends about volcanoes

Filicudi: small island, big history

The summit craters

The Cathedral of Lipari and the Norman Cloister of the Benedictine Monastery

Malvasia delle Lipari DOC

The pure white of the pumice quarries

The underwater morphological elements of the Aeolian Islands

Vulcano, the youngest of the Aeolian works of art

The senses tell The Pumice Quarries of Lipari

The senses tell The Stacks of Panarea

The hidden part of the Aeolian Islands

Volcanoes as a natural art form

The salt lake of Lingua

The Sciara del Fuoco

The underwater fumarolic activity of Lisca Bianca

The Thermal Baths of Saint Calogerus

At the heart of trade in history

Lipari Castle, “fused” with the lava

Alicudi, where time has stood still

The Aeolian Islands, where volcanology was born

The 2002-03 eruption

The polis of the living and the necropolis of the dead

Panarea and its history

How pumice is formed

The malleability of Vulcano’s mud

“Vulcanian” eruptions

The senses tell The Village of Capo Graziano

Tsunamis: a not uncommon phenomenon in Stromboli

Where do Vulcano’s gases come from?

The senses tell The summit craters

“Strombolian” activity in the place where its definition was born

Seven islands, dozens of volcanoes

Filicudi, a submerged paradise

Panarea, where sea and volcanoes become sculptors

The stacks of Panarea

The senses tell The Sciara del Fuoco

Pollara, between poetry and beauty