Twenty-five years of Dialogues, a festival that this year sets sail for Athens and a city, Trani, which has lived on meetings for centuries. All around, a Puglia to discover without haste: the early Christian crypt of Bitonto, the octagonal enigma of Castel del Monte, the DOP bread of Altamura.
TO Trani the sea reaches up to the steps of the cathedral. San Nicola Pellegrino stands on the edge of the water, a light stone that turns pink at sunset, and for almost a thousand years he has been observing those who disembark from the Adriatic. Merchants from Venice, Amalfi, Pisa, Jewish communities: this city has always lived on exchanges.
Tradition places here, in 1063, the Order Marisamong the oldest codes of maritime law in the Mediterranean. A few steps from the port, in the old Jewish quarter, the Scolanova synagogue, from the 13th century, remains, the oldest in Europe in activity (even if in rivalry with that of Prague). A crossroads, even before the word became a slogan.
Twenty-five years of comparison
On this vocation, I Dialoghi di Trani was born in 2002, with the contribution of the publisher Giuseppe Laterza and the organization of the La Maria del Porto association. The formula has remained the same: free meetings, people of different orientations and backgrounds sitting at the same tablethemes such as justice, legality, environment and the Mediterranean.
The XXV edition, which recently closed its doors in the Apulian headquarters, has chosen as its underlying theme the Complexitywhich artistic director Rosanna Gaeta describes as one fertile space to understand the present. Among the guests Dacia Maraini, Gianrico Carofiglio, Gustavo Zagrebelsky and the Ukrainian writer Yaryna Grusha. Today, when differences are resolved more and more often with weapons, sit and listen to those who think differently it almost becomes a political gesture.
From Trani to Athens
But this year the festival is also packing its bags. On 8 October he arrives at the Italian Cultural Institute in Athens, then at the Buchmesse in Frankfurt and at the European Parliament in Brussels. The link with Greece has a particular flavor: Trani, the “Athens of Puglia”, brings its ideas to the cradle of democracy. A culture in motionwhich retraces in reverse the routes of the merchants of the past.
Bitonto among hidden treasures
Visiting Trani is a good way to discover Publia in a not too conventional way, but this region has many other surprising and little-known places. Forty minutes away by car, among centuries-old olive trees, Bitonto remains outside the circuits of mass tourism.
Whoever skips it makes a mistake. The cathedral, modeled on San Nicola di Bari, is considered the most complete expression of Apulian Romanesque. The real show is below: in the crypt the remains of an early Christian church from the 5th century and a mosaic with a winged griffin. On the surface, the ambo signed in 1229 by the magister Nicolaus, with an eagle supported by a human caryatid, is worth a stop.
Right next to the cathedral, under the stone vaults of an ancient monastic refectory, The Patriarch it is one of the few Italian restaurants with a paper of oils. Chef Emanuele Natalizio introduced it in 2010 and rotates dozens of monocultivars on the table, pairing each dish, including desserts, with the right extra virgin olive oil. Here the oil stops being a condiment and becomes the protagonist: the gold of Puglia, served like a great wine.
Canosa and its underground surprises
Also not to be missed is another cultural outpost as surprising as it is hidden: the archaeological museum of Canosa. Housed in the elegant nineteenth-century rooms of Palazzo Sinesi, it reveals itself as a treasure chest of unexpected relevance. Here, the sober composure of the noble architecture acts as a backdrop to a fascinating setting underground journey among the secrets of the Daunian hypogea, the monumental chamber tombs of the ancient pre-Roman elite.
Walking among these showcases means being almost hypnotized by the famous “Canosini vases”, masterpieces of polychrome ceramic whose exuberant plastic decorations tell stories of pomp, power and Hellenistic rituals, culminating in the aesthetic vertigo of the very rich grave goods of the Varrese Tomb.
For the attentive traveler, Palazzo Sinesi is not a simple exhibition of finds, but one intimate and privileged gateway to the aristocratic soul of a civilization that dominated the Ofanto valley, giving the pure emotion of a close encounter with eternity and the refined aesthetic taste of the ancient world. Also a sign of a Puglia that can never be taken for grantedespecially when you abandon the most worn paths.
Castel del Monte, the octagon that cannot be explained
On the most famous hill of the Murge Federico II left a stone enigma. Castel del Monte, built around 1240, has an octagonal plan, eight octagonal towers, no moat, no kitchen. Fortress, hunting lodge, temple of knowledge? Scholars still argue. A UNESCO heritage site since 1996, you can also find it on the one cent coin. Climb in the late afternoon, when the grazing light lights up the stone.
For dinner we head down towards Minervino Murge, on the edge of the Alta Murgia Park. Masseria Barbera it is the estate of Riccardo Barbera, a lawyer who left his robe for the family garden and who among his ancestors boasts a Garibaldian. The spirit is the same: honest cuisine, home-made products, baked lamb and garden vegetables brought to the table by chef Gianluca Ferri.
Altamura, where bread has a brand
Further south the landscape becomes harsh and you arrive at Altamura. Here bread is a serious thing: durum wheat from the Murge, thick crust, yellow crumb that lasts for days. In 2003 it became the first European baked product with the DOP.
Enter a historic bakery like Di Gesù, early in the morning, the smell will follow you all day. The city also guards the Man of AltamuraNeanderthal skeleton remained for about 150 thousand years in the Lamalunga cave.
A Puglia to listen to
Sea, stone, wheat, oil. You cross between Trani and the Murge a Puglia far from postcardsa land that for centuries has held together Normans, Swabians, Byzantines, Arabs and Jews. The Dialogues continue that work with a microphone, a chair and an audience that doesn’t necessarily have to agree.
Destinations that only sell experiences to be consumed quickly produce tourists. Places like these, where a cathedral tells of the Normans and an oven tells of wheatstill produce travellers. There is no need for turnstiles or closed numbers against overtourism. We need people that they arrive knowing where they are putting their feetwho enter a crypt before entering a souvenir shop and who sit at the table to listen as well as eat.
