The bread of Altamura, baked in wood-fired ovens with re-milled durum semolina, was the first in Europe to be granted DOP status: the smell of the old bakeries guides your visit better than any map. On the square, the cathedral commissioned by Frederick II in 1232 — the only church he founded in Apulia — shows off a rose window and one of the richest carved portals in the region.
The territory is enormous: the largest comune by area in the metropolitan city of Bari and the third in all Apulia, it also carries more protected hectares than any other inside the Alta Murgia National Park. Here opens the Pulo, the great karst sinkhole of the plateau. In a cave at Lamalunga, in October 1993, cavers found the Man of Altamura, the most complete Neanderthal skeleton ever recovered; and in a disused quarry at Pontrelli, dinosaurs left thousands of footprints eighty million years ago. Authentic Murgia, no shop windows.
Chiesa della Santissima Trinità · Chiesa di San Biagio · Chiesa di Sant'Antonio and 3 more
Burrata di Andria
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Next up: Saint Irene, patron of a city refounded by Frederick II in 1232, Wednesday 5 May
Nearest airport: Bari Palese, 40 km away
Altamura is part of 🍷 Food & wine
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📅 Every year, on 5 May
Altamura celebrates Saint Irene, virgin and martyr, on 5 May; its cathedral, built in 1232 by Emperor Frederick II on the ruins of an ancient city, remained a palatine church exempt from episcopal jurisdiction until 1929.
Chiesa della Santissima Trinità Church known as the Trinità Vecchia in Altamura, probably fifteenth-century, with the pilgrims' cross. Chiesa di San Biagio Seventeenth-century church on corso Federico II in Altamura, with Maramonte's fresco of Saint Christopher. Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Church in Altamura, formerly of the Immaculate, holding the body of Mélanie Calvat, seer of La Salette. Chiesa di Santa Chiara Seventeenth-century church of the Poor Clares in Altamura, with a large Immaculate Conception canvas. Grotta di Lamalunga Karst cave near Altamura where the Altamura Man, a Neanderthal skeleton, was found in 1993. Porta Bari Gate of Altamura from the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, spared when the city walls were torn down. Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
