Molfetta · Giovinazzo · Terlizzi · Ruvo di Puglia · BA
Four towns in the province of Bari, two on the sea and two that the sources do not describe as coastal, which the sources link more than the map suggests. Molfetta had a Gonzaga prince, and Giovinazzo too, according to the tourist website Discover Giovinazzo, which carries the Comune's copyright, passed to the Gonzaga; Terlizzi, according to Wikipedia, depended on the counts of Giovinazzo from the 11th century, and in 1770 the two fiefs, united, passed together to the Regia Corte; in the 4th century BC, according to Wikipedia, the territory of Rhyps also included Molfetta and Terlizzi; in Roman times Ruvo was a municipium along the Via Traiana. It is a journey for those who want to move from the coastal defences of the sixteenth century to the nineteenth-century collections of the hinterland, following icons that tradition has arriving from the sea or found in the woods, towers and counts.
At a glance
Duration. 4 days.
The route
Day 1 — Molfetta
The old centre stands on the Sant'Andrea peninsula, and the italia.it portal describes its elliptical plan. The Duomo di San Corrado, built according to the Comune's tourist map between the 12th and 13th centuries, lines up three domes on an axis and two towers, one a bell tower and one a lookout; in the apse, a window decorated with Kufic characters and stylophore lions, and inside there is a holy-water stoup known as "del saraceno", from the 12th century. The saint is a Bavarian pilgrim: the ministry's record for a cave near Modugno has him die in 1127 and recalls his body being translated to the cathedral of Molfetta. In 1785, writes the Comune, his bones passed to the church of Sant'Ignazio, formerly of the Jesuits, which since then has been the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta: this is why the town has an old Duomo and a new cathedral. The sea explains the defences. After the castle was destroyed in 1416, at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Università of Molfetta had the Torrione Passari built, circular in plan, 11 metres wide, with a wall of about 3 metres and three rooms one above the other, including a cistern. In 1529 the French assault came from the sea, with the Sack. The Torrione, owned by the Comune since 1968, has been reopened since 2003 as a centre for contemporary art. Of the ancient walls, according to the Comune's map, only the Arco della Porta della Città remains.
The present harbour stems from a project of 1824, wanted by the Comune at the request of the local seafaring community; in the Fabbrica di San Domenico an exhibition tells of the shipwrights and the boatyards of Molfetta. The Basilica della Madonna dei Martiri, of 1829, enlarges a church founded in 1162: tradition holds that the icon "came from the sea". North of the basilica, writes the Comune, the Ospedale dei Crociati took in pilgrims and since 2019 has been recognised on the route of the Via Francigena del Sud. About 2 km from the centre, according to the Comune, opens the Pulo, a karst formation frequented from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, with an impressed pottery classified as belonging to the so-called "Civiltà di Molfetta"; in the second half of the eighteenth century the Bourbons exploited its nitrate-rich caves for the Reale Nitriera, which supplied saltpetre for gunpowder. The finds are in the Museo del Pulo, in the Casina Cappelluti, a former lazaretto. The prince of Molfetta Cesare Gonzaga leads to the next day: Giovinazzo too passed to the Gonzaga.
Day 2 — Giovinazzo
The Ministry of Culture's record describes the historic centre as coastal and walled, a little over six hectares that the record links to the Natura 2000 site, the "Posidonieto San Vito - Barletta". The medieval name was Juvenatium; the tourist website Discover Giovinazzo, which carries the Comune's copyright, also recalls the Roman Natiolum, marked on the Tabula Peutingeriana. The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta is Romanesque, but the sources date its construction in different ways; italia.it distinguishes in it the original Romanesque apse from the Baroque interventions of the eighteenth century, and the crypt has ten columns. It houses the icon of the Madonna di Corsignano, celebrated in August: according to the Istoria di Santa Maria di Corsignano it was donated by a French crusader who landed at Brindisi in 1188 and was given hospitality in a masseria, but the same website warns that certain information is lacking. The Aragonese walls are dated, by the same website, to around 1453. The reason for the large square is a royal visit: in 1797, for Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina, the town raised 270 ducats, narrowed the harbour inlet by filling it with earth and obtained from it the square known as Borgo, around which in the nineteenth century it spread out in a fan. In piazza Costantinopoli the church was dedicated in 1598 to the Madonna of the sailors who traded with Constantinople. At San Silvestro the dolmen, which the Ministry dates to the Bronze Age, was discovered in 1961 while a specchia was being partly demolished to make crushed stone. In 1770, with the death of the last heiress Eleonora Giudice, the fief of Giovinazzo and Terlizzi passed to the Regia Corte: this is the thread towards the interior.
Day 3 — Terlizzi
The ministry's record of the historic centre registers the "casale in Trelicio" in 782 and assigns castle and walls to the 11th century. Wikipedia, to be re-verified, recalls that from the 11th century Terlizzi depended on the counts of Giovinazzo. As early as 1911 the Encyclopaedia Britannica noted the moat turned into tree-lined avenues. In Palazzo De Napoli the Pinacoteca preserves the bequest of the painter Michele De Napoli, who died in 1892: according to an events portal more than a thousand works, of which 85 are on display. Outside the town, at the sanctuary of Sovereto, two ministry records of 2024 describe a slab with a hole and a tree with roots in relief, which the historian Gaetano Valente links to the legend of the icon found in the woods thanks to a sheep left with its leg in a hole, and in the courtyard an incised triple enclosure, read as a medieval game board rather than as a Templar sign.
Day 4 — Ruvo di Puglia
Ruvo, writes italia.it, was a Peucetian centre and then a Roman municipium along the Via Traiana. In the Concattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, described by the Comune, the bell tower grows out of a square defensive tower of the 11th century to which two storeys were added in the eighteenth century; on the central portal two peacocks peck at grapes, a sign of the Eucharist, and the columns rest on lions supported by telamons, beneath a sixteenth-century rose window with twelve spokes. The Museo Nazionale Jatta explains the rest. In the first half of the nineteenth century, says the Comune, many Ruvo families collected the finds to prevent their dispersal abroad; the museum preserves over two thousand of them, almost all from the territory, purchased by the brothers Giovanni and Giulio Jatta, and their nephew Giovanni junior arranged the display, with showcases and red settees that have remained almost unchanged. The route, according to the Ministry, culminates in the last room with the krater of the Talos Painter. Wikipedia recalls the town razed to the ground in 1350 and the Torre del Pilota, 33 metres high, raised afterwards; and on the night of Maundy Thursday the procession of the Otto Santi. Ruvo is also among the thirteen comuni of the Parco nazionale dell'Alta Murgia: the journey, in our proposal, ends in a comune of the Parco nazionale dell'Alta Murgia.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 16 defects corrected · not approved