Corato

The name is said to be a soldier's pension: after the conquest of Carthage, Scipio rewarded his veterans with land in Apulia, and one of them, a certain Caius Oratus, founded a village here and gave it his own name. Others tie it instead to the square plan of the Roman settlement on the via Traiana. Corato was refounded by the Normans in 1046, with four towers and walls, and when it stayed loyal to Conradin of Swabia to the last, Charles of Anjou left it the motto Cor sine labe doli, a heart without stain of deceit: it is still on the coat of arms.

The Coratina, one of the finest olive cultivars in Italy, carries the name of this town: bitter, fiercely peppery, rich in polyphenols, it is why the mills of Corato appear in oil guides half the world over. The Murgian town, with the concentric rings of its medieval core, lives around Piazza Cesare Battisti and the nineteenth-century theatre; the bonfire of Santa Lucia, lit in the saint's honour from time out of mind, still burns. In 1503 the challenge of Barletta was fought right in between, on the ground separating Corato and Andria. The territory climbs towards the Alta Murgia: sheepfolds, way-stations and dry-stone walls almost all the way to Castel del Monte, which belongs to neighbouring Andria but is ten minutes away. Bread, oil and wine: here the table is a declaration of identity.