In the twelfth century, the Kingdom of Sicily was a culmination of a century-long acquisition of the south which extended from the island to the lower Papal States remaining the only kingdom in Italy for six hundred years. Its origins began in 1016 when forty Normans travelled to Puglia on a pilgrimage. They encouraged their men ‘to come to the land that brings forth milk, honey and so many beautiful things’. Toleration for those who had come before the Normans produced a court rich in ideas and artistic expression. Byzantine and Arab styles of building, decorative arts - particularly mosaic art - language, laws and even customs were all absorbed by the Normans and their successors. Once Naples became the kingdom’s capital in 1266, Hohenstaufen rule was followed by the House of Anjou who maintained rule in Naples but lost Sicily to Peter of Aragon, the first Spanish house to rule culminating in the dynastic unions of the Houses of Habsburg, Aragon and Castille and the eventual sole rule of the kingdom under Charles V in 1516.
