Sicily Greeks, Lombards, and Normans worked together to form a society that historians have said created some of the most extraordinary buildings that the world has ever seen. Palermo continued on as the capital under the Normans. Roger's son Roger II of Sicily succeeded his brother Simon of Sicily as Count of Sicily, and was ultimately able to raise the status of the island to a kingdom in 1130, along with his other holdings, which included the Maltese Islands and the Duchies of Apulia and Calabria. He appointed the powerful Greek George of Antioch to be his "emir of emirs" and
Lombards of Sicily Lombards of Sicily Lombards of Sicily () are an ethnolinguistic minority living in Sicily, southern Italy, speaking an isolated variety of Gallo-Italic dialects, the so-called Gallo-Italic of Sicily. The origins of these communities goes back to the 11th century when soldiers and settlers from Northern Italy, settled the central and eastern part of Sicily during the Norman conquest of the island. After the marriage between the Norman king Roger I of Sicily with Adelaide del Vasto, member of Aleramici family, many Lombard colonisers left their homeland, in the Aleramici's possessions in Piedmont and Liguria, to settle on the island of