Palazzo Reale and Monreale: prices and last entry

Palazzo Reale in Palermo costs €19 and stops admitting at 12:30 pm on Sundays and public holidays, against 4:30 pm on the other six days (September 2026).

The Sunday that ends at 12:30

Last entry is 4:30 pm Monday to Saturday and 12:30 pm on Sundays and public holidays (16:30 and 12:30 on Italian signs).

That four-hour gap is the trap. A Sunday morning in Palermo fills up fast with markets and mass, and the Cappella Palatina is not something to attempt at noon on a whim.

The complex closes on December 25 and January 1.

The price ladder, in 5 steps

Entry costs €19 full, €17 for EU visitors aged 18 to 25 and for teachers, €15.50¹ for EU over-65s and €11 for ages 14 to 17, with an audio guide at €5 (September 2026). Prices are in euros.

Free admission covers under-13s with an adult, visitors with a disability and their companion, university students of art history and related subjects, accredited journalists and ICOM members.

The site is run by the Fondazione Federico II, not by the state museum system, which is why the national free Sunday scheme does not apply here.

It is a parliament, and it behaves like one

1 warning from the operator matters more than any price: the building houses the Sicilian Regional Assembly and can close at short notice for institutional reasons.

Restoration work on the Cappella Palatina is also under way, and parts of the complex may be inaccessible on the day you go.

Neither of those is a reason to skip it. Both are reasons to check palazzorealedipalermo.it the morning of the visit, and to keep a second plan for the afternoon.

Monreale: €6 plus €6, or €12

The cathedral costs €6, including the Cappella Roano, the terraces, the exhibition rooms and the Diocesan Museum. The Benedictine cloister is a separate €6, and the combined ticket for the monumental complex is €12, with an audio guide at €5 (2026).

Buying the two separately costs the same as the combination, so the €12 ticket is a convenience rather than a saving.

The abbey was founded in 1174² at the wish of the Norman king William II. Monreale is its own comune outside Palermo, and the standard way to see it is as a half day out from the city.

Cloister hours, and the ones we could not confirm

The cloister opens 9 am to 7 pm Monday to Saturday and 9 am to 1:30 pm on Sundays and holidays, with last entry 30 minutes before closing (2026).

Hours for the cathedral alone are a different matter. They do not appear on the ticketing page we were able to open, so they are not printed here: check with the basilica before you build a morning around them.

9 monuments, 1 listing, since 2015

The serial UNESCO site Arab-Norman Palermo and the cathedral churches of Cefalù and Monreale was inscribed on July 3, 2015 under criteria ii and iv, and takes in 9 monuments.

7 of them are in Palermo: 2 palaces, meaning the Palazzo Reale with the Cappella Palatina and the Zisa; 3 churches, San Giovanni degli Eremiti, the Martorana and San Cataldo; plus the cathedral and the Ponte dell'Ammiraglio. The other 2 are the cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale.

They all belong to the Norman kingdom of Sicily, between 1130³ and 1194³. Note on sourcing: the UNESCO page itself returns a 403³ to every automated request, so the breakdown comes from the Italian UNESCO commission. For the region, see Sicilia.

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