A journey that must be done. A feeling to try.
In fact, there is an emotion that one can not not live in Puglia.
That of the winter sea: beautiful. Scenarios of absolute silence.
The sea, our blue: today so at the center of just fears because of the pollution we subject it to violence.
So let’s think of the sea right now, savoring the “blue painted blue” of the song by Domenico Modugno, the most famous son of the earth we are talking about: Polignano a Mare, in the Bari area.
Our tour starts from San Vito, a corner that seduces. Fraction of Polignano, is presented as marvelous and minute complex, with pretty abbey. The small church, Benedictine, dates back to the 10th century.
Pure splendor for those entering from Bari. Around the famous carrot of Polignano is grown, slow food presidium. In the district, the historic farms are the sign of a campaign that gave its wealthy holiday makers refreshment spaces.
We enter the city after greeting the statue of Domenico Modugno, born in 1928 in Piazza Minerva (today dedicated to the Fallen in Via Fani).
The Lama Monachile cove, once inhabited by the monk seal, is there waiting for us, with its high rocky protection bands and with the massive bridge whose Bourbon paternity has recently been recognized thanks to the research of the scholar Carlo De Luca.
Look over the horizon. You are enchanted. Capture the soothing blue of this sea, Blue Flag since 2008. Sea of caves and cliffs. Beautiful and surprising.
Marked by sixteenth-century towers like the Incina tower, the most beautiful among the survivors. Among the caves that today host a gourmet or chic relaxing restaurant, there is Grotta Palazzese, a historic restaurant.
The port, on the other hand, has never been so great as to the importance of fishing and trade. Polignano, despite its beautiful sea, remains an agricultural center, thanks to its vast hinterland. It tells the dawn of man, better if with the help of a guide (call the Iat: 080 4252336).
Very interesting is the Neolithic settlement in the Santa Barbara district, with its Manfredi hypogeum, very close to the coast (on the site, worth mentioning the studies of Alfredo Geniola and Rocco Sanseverino).
The ancient events of Polignano have brought attention to the Capodimonte vase, a splendid Greek crater discovered here in a vegetable garden, in an enormous tomb, by the bishop Mattia Santoro in 1785: pearl of the Neapolitan museum of the same name, was then stolen at the end of ‘700, finished in London and later at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where it is still located.
Beyond the marquisate arch, you are in the historical center.
Together with the Casa dell’Orologio, home of the old university, the mother church of Maria Assunta dominates the central square. Inside, the works of the sculptor Stefano da Putignano are invaluable, lived between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the polyptych of the Madonna with Child and Saints by Bartolomeo Vivarini, an important fifteenth-century Venetian artist.
Beyond the churches of Sant’Antonio and Purgatorio (and of the Saints Medici Cosma and Damiano fuori le mura), the singularity of the nucleus clinging to the sea is to be seen in the historic center, with balconies ideal for a walk to the light and gentle sea lurch. The marquisal palace is beautiful, today private; thus the palace of San Giuseppe, with an adjoining library.
Polignano is also home to Pino Pascali, a key Italian and international artist of the 20th century, an exponent of Arte Povera. His works are everywhere in the world and the Foundation named after him is committed to making known this genius who said too soon goodbye to life, who died in a car accident just over forty years.
Just this year the fortieth anniversary of death.
Polignano greets you, you look at the sea once again: Puglia, in these parts, embraces you like this.
