King Roger
In 1145 king Roger II the Norman, decreed his burial place to be Cefalù, in a strategic point between Palermo and Messina, on the rock from where the two gulfs between Capo d'Orlando and Capo Zafferano originated.
Thus the cathedral was built as an architectural, iconographic and theological-liturgical masterpiece because it was a political-dynastic masterpiece.
Roger had obtained the reconstitution of the diocese (1131) and provided the cathedral with two porphyry sarcophagus decorated with magnificent mosaics.
He died in February 1154, but his will was will wasn't respected: he was actually buried in 1171 in the Palermo cathedral where Fredrick II had transported the two sarcophagus from Cefalù after 1200.