The Bari basin and the lands of the archbishops

Bari · Modugno · Bitritto · Valenzano · Capurso · BA

Five municipalities of the province of Bari: the provincial capital and four centres of the immediate hinterland. No source links them in an itinerary, and the grouping is ours. One thread, however, the documents do show. Modugno, writes its municipality, lies in the “Bari basin” and was a fief of the archbishops of Bari; Bitritto too was a fief of the archbishop of Bari; the abbey of Ognissanti di Cuti, at Valenzano, passed in 1295 to the Basilica di San Nicola, and its first abbot was also its rector. In our reading, it is a journey for those who want to see how a medieval city stretched out over the nearby countryside. The thread holds for Modugno, Bitritto and Valenzano; for Capurso the sources read say little, and the account takes that into account.

The route

Day 1 — Bari Vecchia

The old city occupies the peninsula between the two harbours, within the old walls; the name “Vecchia”, the italia.it portal recalls, arose in the nineteenth century to distinguish it from the new city. Its centre has a precise cause. According to the Enciclopedia dell'Arte Medievale, in 1011 the catepan Basilio Mesardonite built there a fortified citadel, with the residence, the offices and four churches; in 1087 abbot Elia began the new church for the relics of san Nicola, brought by three ships from Bari, precisely on the site of the demolished citadel. Byzantine power gave way to the saint. The 1930 Enciclopedia Italiana gives the basilica as completed in 1108 and recalls the council of 1098, with 198 bishops. Inside, the throne known as Elia's is today dated, on stylistic grounds, to the second half of the 12th century, and the ciborium bears an enamelled plaque with the coronation of Roger II, from about 1135. The Cattedrale di San Sabino, partly destroyed in 1156 by William the Bad, was rebuilt by bishop Rainaldo on the model of San Nicola; next to it, the “Trulla” was probably the medieval baptistery. Italia.it counts in the quarter 40 churches and chapels, 120 votive shrines and two old synagogues in the former Jewish quarter. San Marco dei Veneziani, according to the Enciclopedia Italiana, commemorates the siege of 1002 repelled with the fleet of doge Pietro Orseolo II; the Vallisa, according to the Enciclopedia dell'Arte Medievale, from the beginning of the 11th century, was distorted by the restorations of 1962. The day after, the castle and the new city.

Day 2 — Bari, the castle and the Murattian borgo

The Castello svevo opens onto piazza Federico II di Svevia. The cultura.gov.it page tells that Frederick II took it in hand again between 1233 and 1240, that Charles of Anjou strengthened the north wing, then lapped by the sea, and that in the sixteenth century Isabella of Aragon and Bona Sforza enclosed it in a bastioned circuit and made it a Renaissance residence with a double staircase; in the Bourbon era it was a prison and barracks. You enter through the Frederician portal, through the tower known as “dei Minorenni”. In the entrance hall, the Enciclopedia dell'Arte Medievale notes, remain the signatures of Mele da Stigliano, Ismahel and Minerrus de Canusia. In the west wing the Gipsoteca keeps the 1911 plaster casts by Pasquale Duretti and Mario Sabatelli, made for the Regional Ethnographic Exhibition of the Fiftieth Anniversary, and on the ground floor two small excavation areas show Byzantine structures. The castle is closed on Mondays and open from Tuesday to Saturday from 9 to 19 and on Sundays from 9 to 13.30 (until 19 from 1 April to 30 September), according to the page read on 2026-11-08. Outside the walls, the Murattian borgo had its first stone laid on 25 April 1813. In the city, at via Spalato 19, the Pinacoteca metropolitana, founded in 1928, has borne since 2002 the name of Corrado Giaquinto, of whom it displays seven works; the Teatro Petruzzelli, from 1903, was rebuilt after a fire and resumed its activity in 2009. After 1464, the Enciclopedia Italiana recalls, Bari passed to the Sforza; the duchy then came to Isabella, widow of Gian Galeazzo, and to her daughter Bona: the ladies of the castle also mark the next stop.

Day 3 — Modugno

Modugno lies on the south-western outskirts of the provincial capital, on almost flat ground rising towards the Murgia; its municipal page recalls that until 1928 the territory reached the sea, at Palese, later passed to Bari. The first document, from May 1021, is a contract for a vineyard, and the period of Isabella of Aragon and Bona Sforza is for the municipality that of “greatest splendour”. The ministerial record of the historic centre attributes to 1347, in full Angevin rule, a second wall, and points out Palazzo Cesena among the notable buildings. The bell tower of the mother church, built after 1604 to a design by Bartolomeo dell'Amendolara, was long believed Romanesque: for Vinaccia, cited by the record, it is a revival, struck by lightning in 1622, in 1726 and in 1935. About 3 km to the south, on the provincial road to Bari, the fortified casale of Balsignano has, according to the 2024 ministerial record, an outer circuit of over 500 metres with square towers and an inner one with churches and castle; in 2011 the foundations of two towers were found in addition to the five visible. The FAI adds that in 1092 it was donated to the Benedictine abbey of Aversa. Along the Lama Lamasinata the rock sanctuary of the Madonna della Grotta, mentioned in 1189, is a laura in the rock. Around 1125 the Bavarian pilgrim Corrado lived there for about two years, in a cave of about eight metres; he died in 1127 and the body was taken to Molfetta. The excavations following 1974 brought to light a Lamentation frescoed between 1290 and 1310 and a 12th-century mosaic floor, white and red. The 1985 landscape protection order on the “territory of the lame”, mentioned by the records of the historic centres, concerns Modugno and Valenzano too.

Day 4 — Bitritto, Valenzano, Capurso

In Bitritto the castle houses the Town Hall and the Library. According to the ministerial record it could be the core of the casale “Vitrictum” of a document of 1070; in the Norman age it was a castrum with three towers, around 1350 archbishop Bartolomeo Carafa modified it, and today it has a trapezoidal plan with two towers. The Chiesa Matrice della Madonna di Costantinopoli, writes the municipality, is linked to the end of a plague epidemic and was rebuilt in the eighteenth century with the citizens' funds.

In Valenzano the centre, according to the Ministry's record, was enclosed in the 12th century by quadrangular walls with three gates; a tower of the castle remains, and the church of San Pietro, today of the Padre Eterno. In the countryside, on the road between Capurso and Ceglie, the church of Ognissanti di Cuti is what remains of a Benedictine monastery dismantled in 1737: three naves, three apses and, outside, three domes that look like square-based pyramids. Its founder is said to be the presbyter Eustasio according to the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Eustazio according to the Ministry's record; the Dizionario calls him “fundator et abbas” in a bull of 1115, and from 1105 he was also rector of San Nicola: the basin comes back to Bari. A private source, still to be re-checked, says the Processione dei Misteri has been uninterrupted since 1675.

Capurso, according to its ministerial record, has an almost elliptical core once enclosed by walls and a moat and dominated by a castle, with lanes with external staircases called “gaifo” or “vignale”. The sanctuary of the Madonna del Pozzo dates from the eighteenth century; an ex-voto of 1820 recalls a lightning bolt that fell while the fathers were reciting the Office. In 2014 the town was proclaimed “Civitas Mariae”. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.

DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 12 defects corrected · not approved