PALERMO, a city of Sicily (Greek, 1163/opitos; Latin, Pan, hormus, Panormus), capital of a province of the same name, in the kingdom of Italy, and the see of an archbishop. Pop. (1931), town 301,166, commune 389,699. The city stands in the north west of the island, on a small bay looking east, the coast forming the chord of a semicircle of mountains which hem in the cam pagna of Palermo, called the Conca d'Oro. The most striking point is Monte Pellegrino (from the grotto of Santa Rosalia, a favourite place of pilgrimage) at the north of this semicircle; at the south-east is the promontory of Zaffarano, on which stood Soluntum (q.v.).
A neolithic settlement and necropolis were discovered in 1897 at the foot of Monte Pellegrino, on the north-east side. Panormus certainly was Phoenician as far back as history can carry us. As the Greeks colonized the east of the island, the Phoenicians with drew to the north-west, and concentrated themselves at Panormus, Motye, and Soluntum. Like the other Phoenician colonies in the west, Panormus came under the power of Carthage. After its conquest by Pyrrhus in 276 B.C. the city was soon recovered by Carthage, but in 254 B.c. it was taken by the Romans. (See PUNIC WARS.) In the First Punic War, Hamilcar Barcas was encamped for three years on Hiercte (246-243 B.c.) which should be identi fied, not with Monte Pellegrino, but with the next mountain to the west of it, Monte Castellaccio, south of the bay of Sferracavallo, which agrees far better with the description of Polybius. The Roman camp lay rather more than half a mile to the south, and there was continual fighting between the two forces (Kromayer, Antike Schlachtfelder iii. 1, Berlin, Weidmann, 1912 4 sqq.). Panormus received the privileges of autonomy and immunity from taxation. A colony was sent here by Augustus, and the place re mained of considerable importance, though inferior to Catana. The town was taken by the Vandal Genseric in A.D. 440. It after wards became a part of the East-Gothic dominion, and was recov ered for the empire by Belisarius in 535, till it was taken by the Saracens in 835. Panormus now became the Muslim capital.
After the Norman conquest the city remained for a short time in the hands of the dukes of Apulia. But in 1093 half the city was ceded to Count Roger, and in 1122 the rest was ceded to the second Roger. When he took the kingly title in 1130 it became "Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput." Dur ing the Norman reigns Palermo was the main centre of Sicilian history, especially during the disturbances in the reign of William the Bad (1154-1166). The emperor Henry VI. entered Palermo in 1194, and it was the chief scene of his cruelties. In 1198 his son Frederick, afterwards emperor, was crowned there. It passed under the dominion of Charles of Anjou in 1266, but the famous Vespers of 1282 put an end to the Angevin dominion. From that time Palermo shared in the many changes of the Sicilian kingdom. In 1535 Charles V. landed there on his return from Tunis. The last kings crowned at Palermo were Victor Amadeus of Savoy, in 1713, and Charles III. of Bourbon, in 1735. The loss of Naples by the Bourbons in 1798, and again in 1806, made Palermo once more the seat of a separate Sicilian kingdom. The city rose against Bourbon rule in 1820 and in 1848. In 186o came the final deliverance, at the hands of Garibaldi.