San Cataldo, next door to La Martorana, is the most visually distinctive small church in Palermo: a stripped Norman block topped by three brilliant red bulbous domes, identical in style to the better-known domes of San Giovanni degli Eremiti. Built in the 1160s for Chancellor Maio of Bari, the interior was never finished and the original mosaics never executed.
The result is a rare austere Norman space, lime-washed walls, brick floor, the structure as built. The contrast with the next-door Martorana is jolting — one absolutely bare, the other absolutely covered in late-Baroque and Byzantine excess. Both are visited on the same Arab-Norman UNESCO ticket.