Bari, In Italy’s Heel, Is Now Being Discovered By Those Tired Of The Bustle of Naples And Palermo

Name any town in southern Italy to ten Italian-Americans and most of them will cry out with fervor, “That’s where my parents/wife/aunt/uncle/cousin came from!” After Naples and Palermo, the city many Italian-Americans will name Bari, located on the Adriatic Sea in the heel of Puglia. As one of the many southern cities whence emigrated hundreds of thousands of poverty stricken Italians looking for the streets of gold in America, Bari was a major conduit for those who lived on Italy’s east coast.

Today Bari is more a city many people move into rather than away from. Brought back to life slowly after the war, Puglia and Bari’s marketers have avidly poured money into promotion and advertising. Bari, being less well known, has not, as yet, been overrun with tourists—though summers are filling up—nor, given its size, hasn’t the huge population that makes Naples and Palermo tough to navigate. Bari was built to be a wide open sea town—on a clear day you can see the coast of Albania (best view is from the Ferris wheel)— ideal for striding its wide boulevards and strolling the narrow streets of its old historic heart.

Given its vulnerable location the city needed a massive fort, the Castello Normanno-Svevo, right in its center, built inside a moat at the end of the 12th century when the city was still under Norman rule. The king of Sicily took the town and demolished the castle, but it was rebuilt in the next century 13th century and expanded over several hundred years. Its profile dominates the city center, and the building is now used mainly for exhibitions. A beloved legend has it that in 1221 St. Francis of Assisi paid a visit to Emperor Frederick II , who sought to test the monk’s fortitude by sending a beautiful woman to his room, whom Francis sent right out again.

Baresi and tourists flock to the city’s beaches, particularly Pane e Pomodoro (“bread and tomato,” so-called because people who sun themselves there snack on bread and slices of tomato), which is sandier than most Mediterranean strands, and it provides a relaxing time to wander around the Old Harbor to get a sense of Bari’s ancient maritime history. Bari, by the way, is hot in summer but gets cool breezes from the sea. In fall and winter it is fairly temperate.

Like all Italian cities Bari is peppered with churches. The two principal ones are the 12^th century Santa Claus at Basilica San Nicola, where the city’s patron St. Nicholas’s relics were buried after sailors stole them from the town of Myra in 1087. Unique is a space in the basement crypt used as an Eastern Orthodox chapel where Mass is still held. There is also a large, more formal Russian Orthodox Church in the town center.

The Basilica is actually larger than Bari Cathedral (a cathedral denotes the seat of the city’s archbishop), built in the late 12^th century on the ruins of a former Byzantine church. In the Renaissance a baroque façade and other many other decorative elements were placed over its simpler Romanesque architecture. Here the local Saint Columba’s remains reside; she, too, kept her virginity intact.

As important as churches are to an Italian city, their secular counterparts are the grand piazzas, whose principal one in Bari is the well-named Piazza Mercantile, created in the early 14^th century. Along its broad walkways and splendid boulevard and on the side streets that feed it, local and international stores (outside of Venice, Bari probably has the most such offerings of the Adriatic coast) as well as trattorias and cafés where people stroll arm and arm and sit down on a whim for an espresso and cornetto pastry or gelato.

You should also consider a visit to the city’s finest art gallery, the Pinacoteca Metropolitana in a palatial building that displays a range of local and Italian art old and modern like Palma Il Giovane, Giuseppe De Nittis, Giovanni Boldini, Giorgio de Chirico and Giorgio Morandi. Also quite beautiful on the broad Corso Cavour (it seems every Italian city must have a street named after Cavour, Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuele along with scores of saints) is the Teatro Petruzzelli, where symphonies, ballets and operas are presented throughout the year. Its stunning terracotta-colored façade the reveals what is the fourth largest opera house in the country, opened in 1903, and has hosted everyone from Pietro Mascagni, Beniamino Gigli, , Riccardo Muti, Renata Tebaldi, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras, and Katia Ricciarelli.

Once you’ve enjoyed your touring of Bari’s most important structures it is time to narrow your focus to the winding Old Town streets of marvelous quiet. The spires of the churches make good sign points for a maze impossible to follow without asking directions from the ladies who sit outside their apartments selling freshly made orecchiette ear-shaped pasta, a Puglian specialty.

What I found remarkable was that the ancient stone streets always look like rain had just fallen, leaving a wet sheen, but that is the way they always look, maintained daily with brushes and mops and brooms by the neighborhood’s residents. You’ll also find a lot of laundry hanging from the balconies, a tradition kept up by every class of people in Bari who take advantage of the salt- scented air off the sea, which lies outside the Old Town along a perimeter that makes for a good walk, with plenty of slatted benches along the way.

There are numerous small trattorias in Old Town that you come upon, first by the aroma of the cooking, as well a fishmongers and groceries selling Pugliese food and wine, which I shall have the happy opportunity to be writing about soon.