  In this paper we explore various interconnections between rich words,
Sturmian words, and trapezoidal words. Rich words, first introduced in
arXiv:0801.1656 by the second and third authors together with J. Justin and S.
Widmer, constitute a new class of finite and infinite words characterized by
having the maximal number of palindromic factors. Every finite Sturmian word is
rich, but not conversely. Trapezoidal words were first introduced by the first
author in studying the behavior of the subword complexity of finite Sturmian
words. Unfortunately this property does not characterize finite Sturmian words.
In this note we show that the only trapezoidal palindromes are Sturmian. More
generally we show that Sturmian palindromes can be characterized either in
terms of their subword complexity (the trapezoidal property) or in terms of
their palindromic complexity. We also obtain a similar characterization of rich
palindromes in terms of a relation between palindromic complexity and subword
complexity.
