The old city centre of Palermo, with its area of over 240 hectares - about one square mile - is one of the largest in Europe and also one of the richest and most varied. It contains over 500 palaces, churches, convents, and monasteries, plus seven theatres. The city has steadily expanded since the period of Phoenician colonisation, with successive waves of Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Swabians, Normans, and Spaniards, until the more recent town-planning initiatives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a result, Palermo is extremely variegated and complex in its layout, although it has also succeeded in maintaining a clearly recognisable overall uniformity of structure and character.
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