On 13 February 1503 thirteen Italian knights led by Ettore Fieramosca challenged thirteen Frenchmen in the Disfida di Barletta, and the victory — told by Massimo d'Azeglio in an 1833 novel that made it one of the first expressions of Italian national pride — is still the city's own, re-enacted every year.
Watching over the port stands the Colossus, a Roman emperor in bronze that is the largest surviving statue of the late Empire. The people of Barletta call him Eraclio and credit him with a trick: faced with the Saracen ships he began to weep, saying he was the smallest of the inhabitants, and they, imagining a city of giants, sailed away. The square castle on the sea, the Romanesque-Gothic cathedral and the De Nittis gallery — the Barletta painter loved by the Impressionists — complete a serious, barely touristy sea town. At Canne della Battaglia, inside the municipal territory, Hannibal defeated Rome in 216 before Christ.
Basilica del Santo Sepolcro · Basilica di San Domenico · Chiesa di San Gaetano and 3 more
Burrata di Andria
19 places to stay · top rated: Corso Grand suites 9.6 · Binario1 Rooms 9.5
Next up: Saint Roger and Our Lady of Sterpeto, patrons since 1732 in the city of the Challenge, Sunday 11 July
Nearest airport: Bari Palese, 45 km away
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📅 Every year, on the second Sunday of July, since 1732
Barletta celebrates Saint Roger of Canne and Our Lady of Sterpeto on the second Sunday of July, since 1732; devotion to the Madonna is linked to the 1656 plague, which tradition holds was slowed precisely through her intercession.
Basilica del Santo Sepolcro Gothic basilica in Barletta tied to pilgrims and crusaders, with the Treasure of the Holy Sepulchre. Basilica di San Domenico Basilica in Barletta on corso Garibaldi: in the mid-1500s the Dominicans took over an old Templar church here. Chiesa di San Gaetano Theatine church in Barletta, finished in 1667, which keeps the relic of the Holy Thorn. Chiesa di San Giacomo Old church in Barletta, perhaps founded at the end of the eleventh century by refugees from Canne. Pinacoteca De Nittis Barletta museum dedicated to Giuseppe De Nittis, at Palazzo della Marra since 2007: 146 paintings. Porta Marina The only surviving gate of Barletta's old walls, rebuilt in 1751, with the Bourbon coat of arms. 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.
Outside Barletta, but an easy day trip away.
