During the past few years Puglia has become one of Italy’s touristic hotspots thanks to its delicious food, wines, and olive oil, multi-culture history (Greek, Roman, and Swabian), folk traditions like the pizzica (a frenzied local dance), beautiful white sandy beaches, and the fact that it’s still off-the-beaten-track so the “real Italy” with friendly genuine people and affordable accommodations, the most typical of which are called masserie or farmhouses which welcome guests.  

Magazines often call it “Italy’s Second Tuscany” but without the crowds. 

Except for Lecce with its magnificent Baroque architecture and papier-mâché artifacts that you can watch being made, Puglia is better known for its scenery and lovely white-washed towns like Alberobello, Ostuni, Martina Franca, Locorotondo, and Gallipoli, than for its cities.  However, with Pope Francis’ visit on July 7 and six large cruise ships docking here each week Bari, Puglia’s capital city and southern Italy’s most important commercial center after Naples, is getting more press and tourists. 

In brief, ancient Roman Barium was simply a commercial center, but became the regional capital under the Saracens in 847, and was subsequently the seat of the catapan, the Byzantine governor of southern Italy.  Under the Normans, to whom it fell in 1071, it became a significant maritime center rivaling Venice. 

Here’s why and when you should go

Only a short walk from the Basilica of St. Nicholas is the late 12th century Duomo or Cathedral.  Its Romanesque architecture is based on St. Nicholas’ Basilica, but with a dome and one surviving tower (the other tower collapsed during an earthquake in 1613). The magnificent crypt with mosaic floors houses the icon of the Madonna Odegitria and the remains of St. Sabinus (461-566), a friend of St. Benedict whom he visited in Montecassino and Bari’s original patron saint. 

Wikipedia recounts: “According to tradition, in 1221 Emperor Frederick II met St. Francis of Assisi in this castle.  Supposedly the Emperor had a courtesan sent to Francis’ room and watched through the peephole to see what would happen.  When Francis sent the woman away, Frederick was impressed with his principles; the two spent the rest of the night in conversation.”  

Polish historians close to the nobility spread the so-called Black Legend, according to which Bona was a greedy and unscrupulous woman. In reality, Bona was a woman who seemed born to reign, giving Poland the golden age that preceded the era of her son Sigismund II Augustus.

She imprinted on Polish social life fundamental turning points in the fields of law, religious freedom and agrarian reform, especially in her fiefdoms in western 

 

Russia. Suspected of having her daughter-in-law poisoned, she was expelled from power by her son (1548). She returned to Bari in 1556, going to live in the castle, where she died in 1557. She was buried in the Cathedral, but later in 1589 Queen Anne, her daughter, was able to obtain the transfer from the pontiff to S. Nicola.

The mausoleum was built in Naples and then moved to Bari.

Bona, in old age, is portrayed praying on her knees. The two bishops are St. Nicholas, patron saint of Bari, and St. Stanislaus, patron saint of Poland. The two female allegories hold the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Poland (left) and the Duchy of Bari (right).