THE Sicilian kingdom, encompassing also the south of Italy, contained a great variety of lands, with distinctive economic, ethnic, religious and political characters. It was not as heavily urbanized as parts of the Po valley or northern Tuscany, though it contained two of Europe’s largest cities, Palermo and Naples, the former of which had become the capital under the Norman kings (1130–94), while Naples increasingly acquired the role of capital in the course of the thirteenth century, and stood close by the once vibrant commercial centers of the Amalfi coast. Apulia, facing the Balkans, contained a line of cities which were not permitted by the Normans to achieve true autonomy, but which could trade the wine, grain and olive oil of the Apulian plains for produce of the east.
