Spinazzola

A pope was born at Spinazzola, but the house where he was born is no longer there. Innocent XII came into the world in the castle of the Pignatelli, which at the beginning of the twentieth century was pulled down: of the village's past there remain some stretches of the medieval walls, a commandery of the Order of Jerusalem, the mother church of Saint Peter the Apostle, which is of the sixteenth century, and what was the first Templar hospital in Apulia. From here comes also Michele Ruggieri, the Jesuit who was a missionary in China and who is held to be the first European sinologist. Outside the built-up area, on the rocks of the Murgia between Poggiorsini and Spinazzola, stand the ruins of the castle of the Garagnone, which belonged to the fief of the Orsini; and at the locality of Epitaffio there is a work of 1631, set there to recall the old royal drove road that ran from Melfi to Castellaneta.

The thing that sets this village apart from the rest of the region, though, is water. Spinazzola stands on a terrace ringed by escarpments, looking over the valley of the Locone stream, and out of those escarpments springs come one after another — Pilone, Raica, Dirolla, San Francesco, San Vincenzo, Casalvecchio and more — so that the village's historic fountains are eight: a rare wealth, in a land where water is usually short. The borders, too, have moved about here a good deal. Spinazzola belonged to Basilicata until 4 June 1811, when Joachim Murat, redrawing the provinces of the Kingdom, took it from the district of Matera and passed it into the Terra di Bari; and in 2004, from being a comune of the province of Bari, it entered the new province of Barletta-Andria-Trani.