The parish provostry of San Giacomo is one of the oldest churches in Barletta; at the time of its construction it stood outside the city walls, in a strategic position on the road to Canne.
What to see
The present building is the result of numerous overlays over the centuries. The entrance is now on the north side, in the Porta maggiore on corso Vittorio Emanuele, because buildings erected against the west front make the old main façade invisible; on that north front stands the obelisk with a clock, of Egyptian inspiration, built in 1843, and in 1895 the clock tower was built in the square in front of the church. The interior has a single nave with a transept, a central presbytery with a flat end, set against the neighbouring civil buildings and therefore not visible from outside, and side chapels with ribbed vaults; on the south side are the chapel of the Sacred Heart and the sacristy. The restoration of 2001 brought the original lines back to light, reinstating single-light windows of various periods, the eighteenth-century timber-truss ceiling and the chapel of the Santissimo Salvatore with its thirteenth-century cross vault. The church holds a rich heritage of panels, canvases, liturgical objects, reliquaries and sacred vestments, from the thirteenth to the twentieth century.
The first evidence of Christian worship on the site is a stone bas-relief of the Annunciation, with echoes of Lombard art, of the eighth century; the first documented mention is in a bull of Pope Adrian IV of 1158, and the foundation is thought to date from the end of the eleventh century, by the inhabitants of Canne who moved to Barletta to escape the destruction of their citadel by Robert Guiscard in 1083. An alternative hypothesis has it rising on the ruins of a pagan temple dedicated to Isis, Osiris and Horus, supported by the discovery, in the restorations of 1910, of medals bearing these Egyptian deities. Entrusted at once to the Benedictines and dependent on the abbey of the Santissima Trinità di Monte Sacro, on the Gargano, the church had beside it a monastery, a hospital and the monks' cemetery, which also served as a vegetable garden; in 1205 Frederick II granted permission to build and run a mill, a tavern and an oven, and in 1348 the monastery hosted Louis I of Hungary. From 1390 the church is recorded as held by the secular clergy and in 1594 Archbishop Giulio Caracciolo made it a parish. Disputes with the canons of Santa Maria Maggiore and of the Santo Sepolcro led in 1610 to a fixed order in processions: first three from Santa Maria Maggiore, then the provost of San Giacomo and finally the vicar of the Santo Sepolcro. After a restoration, the church was reconsecrated in 1726.
Visiting
The church is on corso Vittorio Emanuele, with the entrance on the north side. The sources consulted give no opening hours: these should be checked.
Our editors' tip
The long side of the basilica of the Santo Sepolcro also faces the same corso Vittorio Emanuele: the two churches that in the seventeenth century quarrelled over the order of processions can be seen on the same walk.
