Frederick II made Lucera a unique experiment: in the 1220s he transferred tens of thousands of Sicilian Saracens here, creating a Muslim city in Christendom's heart, loyal to the emperor and famed for archers and artisans. The Swabian-Angevin fortress, among the South's largest, still rules its hill.
The "key of Puglia" also keeps an Augustan amphitheatre dug into the stone and the fourteenth-century cathedral, among the rare Angevin cathedrals to survive intact. From the belvederes, the Tavoliere plain stretches like a sea of wheat: Lucera is the history of Capitanata at a single glance.
Near Lucera
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
