La Zisa
You can find rare examples of muqarnas outside of the Islam world in Palermo (Sicily).
A spledid exapmle is a niche in the central hall of the Castello della Zisa, the 12th centure summer residence of the Norman kings.
Vincenza Garofaldo describes in detail this muqarnad and situates it with regard to the practices in the western and the eastern Islamic regions in the article https://www.jstor.org/stable/25769702?seq=1]A methodology for studying Muqarnas: the extant Examples in Palermo.
The muqarnas in la Zisa counts 12 tiers.
It's usual to use just a limited number of element types in a muqarnas. Often in one tier you can find just one element type. But in the muqarnas in la Zisa you can count not less than 8 different elements, combined in a complicated way and mixed over different tiers.
At first we'll take a look at these different types of elements, than we observe how they are combined in the muqarnas.
