Here, on 14 October 1892, Giuseppe Di Vittorio was born, the farm labourer who became Italy's best-loved trade unionist: his house-museum and the square that bears his name tell a story of redemption that is Cerignola's own identity. It was his peasant struggles that wrested half the harvest for the sharecroppers and made the union a national force.
Cerignola is the largest comune in Apulia and in the whole south, the third in Italy after Rome and Ravenna: great estates as far as the eye can see, and today an agricultural capital — its «bella di Cerignola» olive, huge and sweet, reaches tables across half the world. The first document that names it dates from 1150; the earthquake of 1731 levelled almost all of the Terra Vecchia, the medieval town, which is why its early history remains uncertain. The Tonti cathedral, with its imposing late nineteenth-century dome, dominates the plain. And in its territory, in 1503, the battle of Cerignola was fought, won by the Spanish under Gonzalo de Córdoba and remembered in the textbooks as the first decided by hand-held firearms.
Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie · Teatro Saverio Mercadante · Torre Alemanna and 1 more
Burrata di Andria
Compare hotels, B&Bs and holiday homes on Booking.com for your dates.
Next up: Our Lady of Ripalta, patron of a church built over a temple of the goddess Bona, Monday 6 September
Nearest airport: Bari Palese, 73 km away
Cerignola is part of 🍷 Food & wine
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, from 6 to 9 September, culminating on 8 September
Cerignola celebrates Our Lady of Ripalta from 6 to 9 September, culminating on the 8th; her church was built where a pagan temple dedicated to the goddess Bona once stood, in a town that in 1503 was the setting for the famous battle between the French and the Spanish.
Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie Fourteenth-century country church with fifteenth-century frescoes and a graffito on the battle of Cerignola of Teatro Saverio Mercadante Cerignola's main theatre, designed by Leopoldo Vaccaro and inaugurated in 1868 thanks to self-taxation. Torre Alemanna Fortified farm of the Teutonic Knights with a tower and thirteenth-century frescoes, grown around a Cistercian 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 Cerignola, but an easy day trip away.
