• Director(s):

    AUFFRET (JEROME-CECIL)

  • Producer(s):

    BONS CLIENTS (LES), ASSOCIATION DES MUSEES DE LA MEDITERRANEE, ARTE FRANCE

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2018

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    TV, DVD, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET, VOD

The Palatine Chapel in the Palace of the Normans was built in 1130 – about thirty years before the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The Norman king Roger II of Sicily had it built in order to express his Christian faith, cosmopolitanism and tolerance through lavish mosaics.

It was a time of great crusades in the Mediterranean Sea. Christian knights joined up from every corner of Europe to fight. Among them was the count Roger of Hauteville. He took Sicily from the Muslims and put it under Norman control. When his son Roger II inherited his father's crown he created the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily – he made Palermo its capital. Queen Adelaide del Vasto – the young king's mother – will tell us her son's often overlooked but surprising story. He reigned over the only cosmopolitan kingdom of the Mediterranean. Art historians consider this enlightened kingdom to be the Italian Renaissance's place of origin.