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Palermo is the most conquered city in the Mediterranean. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spanish Aragonese, and eventually Italians have all run this place, and none of them left quietly. The result is an architectural conversation nobody planned, where 9th-century Arab-Norman churches sit next to Baroque piazzas next to crumbling Spanish palazzi next to street stalls selling arancini fried in oil on a portable gas burner. The Cappella Palatina alone, with its Byzantine mosaics covering every surface, could keep you occupied for an entire afternoon.

The Ballarò and Vucciria markets are among the most authentic urban food markets in Italy, the kind that tourists still haven't entirely sanitised.

Here you eat panelle (chickpea fritters in a bread roll), sfincione (thick Sicilian pizza with onion and anchovies), and stigghiola (grilled lamb offal) standing up at a stall while a man shouts prices over your head. The Teatro Massimo, completed in 1897, is the largest opera house in Italy and the third largest in Europe. This city does not do things at a modest scale.