La Zisa/Gloriette: Cultural Interaction and the Architecture of Repose in Medieval Sicily, France and Britain

Abstract

Recent scholarship has called attention to the common features shared by five French and British elite centres of leisure called ‘gloriette’ that were built or so-named in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Because these centres of repose and entertainment were located in principal residences, and thus were not garden pavilions, it has been suggested that there was no relationship between the northern gloriettes and the garden pavilion of La Zisa in Palermo, Sicily, whose name also meant ‘the glorious’. This article draws on archival sources in order to enhance our understanding of the resemblances between the gloriette of Hesdin, in northern France, and the four gloriettes in England and Wales. Drawing on the significant features of these five northern gloriettes, it also takes another look at the details of La Zisa, suggesting that we should not be so quick to dismiss its possible influence on the northern gloriettes, most especially the two that were built by King Edward I and Count Robert II of Artois after they had passed through Palermo in 1270/72.