Faced by their imposing size and by Puglia’s sun, which brightens all year round their centuries’ long history, you will be left dazzled by the large number of churches which narrate of a spirituality embedded in the people of this land but also of unresolved mysteries and bloody massacres which conceal hidden treasures and fascinating surprises.
In Bari there is the imposing
Basilica of San Nicola, built in a Romano-Pugliese style, worthy sepulchre which guards the remains of the city’s Patron Saint, but there are those who say that these were stolen from the city of Myra in Asia Minor.
A majestic three-door façade situated between two semi-towers; the interior has three naves with a rib vault ceiling decorated by 17th century gilded inlays with stories of the Saint.
South of Bari, in Monopoli, the
Cathedral of Santa Maria della Madia, beneath the Baroque transept the remains of a Romanesque crypt have been found, and beneath them were found the architectural remains of preceding periods: tombs from the High Middle-Ages, Hellenistic and Messapic eras, which were piled over Bronze Age settlements’ remains.
And what about the grand
Cathedral of Trani? One of the most significant examples of Romanesque-Pugliese rises solitarily on the far side of the harbour.
The white-pinkish stone, the contrast against the sky and the sea grant us an indescribable view; and then: the rose window, the awesome rib vaults, the 28 Greek marble columns with their beautiful capitals.
From north to south, from the sea to the hinterland, the wonders are not over.
In the South, Lecce’s Basilica of Santa Croce, the fullest expression of Leccese Baroque between telamons, lions, dragons, gryphons, putti; and then the unquestionable jewel of the Cathedral of Otranto with the most imposing mosaic floor of the history of Italian art: created by the monk Pantaleone between the 1163 and 1165 it is 54 metres in length and 28 metres wide. Millions of hard limestone polychrome tesserae represent a large tree of life which reproduces episodes from the Sacred Scriptures, legends of the Carolingian and Breton period, of classic mythology, the Zodiac. Some of the characters and episodes represented: Alexander the Great, the Tower of Babel, the Great Flood, King Arthur and so on.
Further to the north, after the unique example of the
San Michele Arcangelo Sanctuary of Monte Sant’Angelo, let yourself be dazzled by the
Cathedral of Troia whose façade harmoniously fuses architecture and sculpture in a complex symbolic language and the rose window is unique in the world with its refined composition of marbled mullions and archways worked in such a way as to look like lacework.
The hinterland contains no fewer surprises: the
Gravina’s cathedral, for instance, with its majestic and noble interior made of differently shaped capitals which hold up round arches, of a baroque ceiling in carved and gilded wood, and embellished by five large splendid paintings, of a polychrome triumphal arch held up by two large pillars of gilded stuccos.
And more: Altamura, Bitonto, Canosa, Conversano, Molfetta, Ruvo…you are just spoilt for choice!
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Faced by their imposing size and by Puglia’s sun, which brightens all year round their centuries’ long history, you will be left dazzled by the large number of churches which narrate of a spirituality embedded in the people of this land but also of unresolved mysteries and bloody massacres which conceal hidden treasures and fascinating surprises.
