Underworld Paradise: Palermo's Genoard Gardens & Climate Adaptation
Unearthing the Climate Inheritance of Palermo's fading 11th-century Arab-Norman Gardens.
Project Overview
"Underworld Paradise" explores the forgotten subterranean legacy of Palermo's Genoard garden, highlighting its contribution to the city's resilience against extreme heat and flash floods.
What is the Genoard?
The Genoard, from the Arabic Jannat al-Arḍ meaning "Paradise on Earth," was a vast royal garden complex rich in orchards, pavilions, and water pools (Amari, 1880). First established during the Kalbid and Fatimid periods of Arab rule (10th-11th centuries), it was systematically expanded under the Norman kings (12th century), who integrated it into an archipelago of enclosed royal hunting and garden precincts. Its precise boundaries remain contested, but it was most likely situated beyond the western side of Palermo's medieval city walls.
At its core was a remarkable system of hydraulic engineering: a gravity-fed network of underground galleries (qanāt), cisterns, fountains, and water pavilions. These water features were not merely functional; they also created stable microclimates, channeled cool air upward into pavilions, and maintained a reliable water supply for the lush garden vegetation.
Today, much of the Genoard lies buried beneath Palermo's 20th-century urban expansion. Yet fragmented traces survive in street alignments, underground water systems, scattered vegetation clusters, and partially preserved garden pavilions. This project investigates how these forgotten traces can perform as sites of climate adaptation for a hotter, drier Mediterranean future.
Image Excerpt from: "Liber ad honorem Augusti" des Petrus de Ebulo, Bern, Burgerbibliothek Cod. 120 II, Süditalien 1196, f.98r.
Water Infrastructure
Gravity-Fed Aqueducts
Underground channels carved from limestone, following Persian qanat technology. These sloped conduits move mountain spring water across the city without mechanical pumping — a sophisticated legacy from the Middle East.
Water Cisterns
Underground water reservoirs and surface basins, including gebbie integrated with the qanat system, holding hundreds of thousands of litres. These reservoirs banked water during wet seasons for release during drought.
Passive Cooling
Ventilation and cooling systems such as camere dello scirocco and salsabil. By harnessing water circulation, these systems trigger convective air currents and evaporative cooling capable of mitigating ambient heat.
Integrated Landscapes
A layered system of pleasure gardens, agricultural plots, hunting parks, and water pavilions that combined aesthetic, productive, and climate-regulating functions.
The same landscapes once celebrated for befitting paradise now bear the scars of drought, extreme heat, and relentless wildfire.
Satellite imagery of Sicily during a wildfire. Source: ESA - Landsat-8, 25 July 2023
Rosamarina dam, Caccamo. Source: EVOLUTIO
Extreme heat in Palermo: Outdoor digital thermometer displaying 41°C. Source: QdS
What are Palermo's most water-scarce neighborhoods?
Water Rationing
Water rationing has become a recurring reality for Palermo's residents. Since October 7, 2024, AMAP has enforced scheduled water shutoffs, with some neighborhoods facing total service interruptions for 24-hour periods on a rotating basis. Despite brief suspensions during the extreme heat of July 2025, water scarcity remained a critical threat until February 16, 2026, when the rationing was temporarily suspended following a significant recovery of the reservoir levels.
The map shows areas subject to water rationing, revealing how climate change is fundamentally altering the city's relationship with its most essential resource. This crisis echoes questions about how historical water systems might inform contemporary solutions for resilient resource management.
Water rationing plan for Palermo, implemented by AMAP from October 2024 to February 2026 in response to severe water scarcity.
One Third of the City Impacted
More than 225,000 residents, or 36 percent of the city's population, live in areas affected by weekly water rationing. Residents plan meals, showers, and laundry around water rationing schedules. Many families stockpile water in rooftop tanks or portable containers to bridge the gaps.
The crisis has roots in both infrastructure and climate. Meanwhile, the island's main reservoirs are fed by rainfall that has declined significantly over the past two decades. The 2024 drought left some reservoirs below 20% capacity — a record low.
Number of people affected by water rationing across AMAP water distribution areas. The map uses Census data from 2021.
Uneven Distribution of Burdens
The burdens of water rationing were not distributed evenly, as public housing residents bore a disproportionate share of the impact. 45 percent of the city's 324,000 total housing units were impacted. Meanwhile, nearly 81 percent of the 8,600 public housing units were affected. In other words, public housing units are almost twice as likely to be affected by water rationing compared to the average Palermo residence. This disparity is especially stark at the city's largest housing complexes. Roughly half of all public housing units are concentrated within three census tracts that were subject to water rationing.
Population density of AMAP water distribution areas overlaid with the number of public housing units.
How can the surviving elements of the Genoard inform strategies for climate adaptation and urban resilience in Palermo?
Underground Elements
The Subterranean Network
Beneath Palermo's Corso Calatafimi district lies an elaborate system of qanāt, cisterns, wells, and aqueducts developed primarily during the Arab-Norman period. Drawing on Persian hydraulic tradition, this gravity-fed network of gently sloped subterranean conduits conveyed groundwater from the surrounding mountains across the suburban landscape without mechanical intervention, supplying the fountains, water pools, and irrigated gardens of the Genoard.
By maintaining a constant subsurface water flow, the system supported extensive tree canopy and shade while enabling passive evaporative cooling within the pavilions above. Central to the architectural dimension was the salsabil — a wall fountain specifically designed to maximise evaporative cooling by sheeting water across carved stone surfaces. Together, these elements sustained stable microclimates across the park and its pavilions.
Many of the Genoard water infrastructures still exist beneath 20th-century development, representing a largely untapped body of evidence for contemporary strategies of urban cooling and greening in the face of increasing climatic stress.
Architectural Elements
Garden Typologies
Riyad — The Inner Garden: The riyad is the typology of the enclosed palatial garden: an intimate yet highly symbolic architectural space rooted in the tradition of the paradise garden. Born within private residences and royal complexes, the riyad operates as a microcosm separated from the outside world — a climatically tempered enclosure in which water functions as the primary ordering element, simultaneously aesthetic, acoustic, and climatic, and vegetation defines its sensory character. In the deeply orientalised culture of Norman Sicily, the paradise garden was a topos (Bellafiore, 2019): nature submitted to architectural order, becoming a space of metaphysical abstraction and a mirror of divine perfection.
Adgal — The Territorial Park: The agdal, meaning "enclosed meadow," is the typology of the large extra-urban park operating at a territorial scale. At Maredolce and Altofonte, on Palermo's rural periphery, it took the form of a working agricultural estate and hunting reserve, doubling as a seasonal retreat for the Norman court. Beyond its productive and recreational functions, the agdal was above all a political landscape — a spatial instrument of territorial control and dynastic legitimation at the city's suburban edge.
![Mughal emperor Babur (1483-1530) superintending the laying-out of the Garden of Fidelity at Kabul [Victoria and Albert Museum]](images/Garden_Painting.jpg)
![Baburnama [Collection of the National Museum New Delhi]](images/Garden_Painting2.jpg)
Interactive Map Interact with the map to explore the remnants of the Genoard Use Desktop for Best Experience
Underworld Paradise
This 1955 aerial photograph captures Palermo during a pivotal moment before rapid urbanization obscured much of the Genoard's remaining traces. By examining this map, we can identify the locations of buried infrastructure and understand how these historical systems might still influence the city's relationship with water and climate today.
