Italy: Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Virgin Mary (Palermo Cathedral), Palermo, Sicily. The church was erected in 1185 by Walter Ophamil (or Walter of the Mill), the Anglo-Norman archbishop of Palermo and King William II's minister, on the area of an earlier Byzantine basilica. The upper orders of the corner towers were built between the 14th and the 15th centuries, while in the early Renaissance period the southern porch was added. The present neoclassical appearance dates from the work carried out between 1781 and 1801.