The cathedral of Lucera, officially the cathedral basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, is the cathedral of the diocese of Lucera-Troia and an example of Angevin Gothic architecture. It was built by Charles II of Anjou after he had destroyed, in 1300, the Saracen colony that Frederick II had settled in the town: the church rose, perhaps on the site of the demolished mosque, between 1302 and 1317, but was already consecrated on 14 October 1302. On stylistic grounds it is attributed to the French architect Pierre d'Angicourt, whose involvement however remains disputed. Pope Gregory XVI declared it a minor basilica in 1834, and in 1874 it became a national monument. The restorations that followed sought to bring it back to the Gothic and destroyed almost everything that the Renaissance and the Baroque had added.
What to see
The façade is asymmetrical: on the right is a square bell tower, topped by an octagonal lantern of the sixteenth century, on the left an octagonal tower. The central portal stands within an aedicule carried by columns and surmounted by the Angevin coat of arms; in the lunette is carved a fourteenth-century Madonna and Child. Inside, a nave and two aisles divided by piers, the transept, three Gothic apses and a trussed roof.
The altar of the presbytery is a stone slab found among the ruins of the domus of Castel Fiorentino, the place where Frederick II died, and brought to Lucera at the beginning of the fifteenth century by Blessed Giovanni Vici da Stroncone. In the left transept the altar of 1790 is dedicated to Santa Maria Patrona: in the niche is the fourteenth-century wooden statue of the Virgin. The two side apses, which became chapels in the sixteenth century, keep seventeenth-century cycles by Belisario Corenzio. In the last arch of the right aisle stands the pulpit of 1560, on four columns.
Visiting
The cathedral stands in the square that bears its name. Opening and Mass times should be checked with the cathedral parish; since 1955 the church has also been the diocesan sanctuary of Santa Maria Patrona.
Our editors' tip
In the right aisle, under the bell tower, look for the marble statue of a reclining man with a curly beard: nobody knows who he is. Until the thirties of the twentieth century it lay on the floor, and the faithful, on entering the church, would strike it with kicks and spit on it; it was raised precisely to put an end to the custom. Giuseppe Ungaretti, who visited Lucera in that period, also wrote about it.
