  This paper is concerned with palindromes occurring in characteristic Sturmian
words $c_\alpha$ of slope $\alpha$, where $\alpha \in (0,1)$ is an irrational.
As $c_\alpha$ is a uniformly recurrent infinite word, any (palindromic) factor
of $c_\alpha$ occurs infinitely many times in $c_\alpha$ with bounded gaps. Our
aim is to completely describe where palindromes occur in $c_\alpha$. In
particular, given any palindromic factor $u$ of $c_\alpha$, we shall establish
a decomposition of $c_\alpha$ with respect to the occurrences of $u$. Such a
decomposition shows precisely where $u$ occurs in $c_\alpha$, and this is
directly related to the continued fraction expansion of $\alpha$.
