The city of Barletta known as the "City of the Challenge", has always played a leading role in the history of Puglia.
At the time of the Crusades, it was one of the most important ports in the Adriatic thanks to a favorable position favorable for reaching the Holy Land. Just the passage of merchants, pilgrims and warriors heading for the Middle East gave rise to the city's fortune. The great influx of capital did not stop with the end of the Crusades and the religious orders that had settled in Barletta for the occasion proved to be very skilled in managing large heritages giving rise to a rich partnership. Later also the emperor Frederick II took note of the importance of Barletta and wanted it among the state-owned cities of his reign.
In 1503, during the second of the wars of Italy which saw France rivaling Spanish-Austrian Empire for supremacy in Europe, the Osteria di Veleno in Barletta was the place where following an altercation between Italians and French there was the confrontation between the soldiers of the two sides remembered as the "Challenge of Barletta".
Recognized city of art, Barletta offers an important heritage, with elegant architecture and precious museum collections. You can breathe its history by walking through the alleys of its historic center. The heart of the ancient center is the Castle, one of the most beautiful Renaissance fortresses in the South, home to the Civic Museum. A few steps away is the Cathedral, one of the few examples of a Palatine Basilica in Apulia.
Known as previously mentioned for the famous challenge, Barletta invites you to go back in time with a visit to the Cantina della Disfida, a national monument, inside a fourteenth-century palace. Just outside the historic center, Palazzo della Marra houses the "Giuseppe De Nittis Art Gallery", with over 200 paintings by the impressionist of Barletta origins. It is not difficult to appreciate the merits of the city of Barletta because everywhere, in the intricate alleys of the village as well as in the wide streets of the center, the attention is captured by often impressive monuments. From the Middle Ages to the modern age, each era has left its testimonies.
The famous bronze colossus, the cathedral, in which Gothic and Romanesque coexist in harmony, the palaces, the expression of the best Apulian Renaissance, are just some of the monuments that the city offers to those who know how to enjoy them.
The historic tavern, called the house of Veleno, is the building today known as the "Cantina della Sfida". It is the place where, according to tradition, a banquet was set up, according to the chivalric customs, in honor of the French who had been defeated during a clash with the Spaniards, including the captain Don Diego of Mendoza, who provoked the opponents by comparing their value to his Italian one. The captive French knights, the proud La Motte and his men stood out, did not accept what they considered an offense: to be compared to the Italians, incapable and traitors. So on 13 February 1503 the clash took place between thirteen Italian knights, led by Ettore Fieramosca and 13 French knights, in the duel of the famous Challenge of Barletta. This episode has been widely used by Italian nationalist propaganda as the historical moment that sanctioned the birth of the Italian national consciousness. Nevertheless most probably the French nobleman La Motte was referring to Neapolitans, since the kingdom of Naples was the territory that they were fighting over against the Spanish. In the Cantina della Disfida, the historical representation of this chivalric contest was celebrated for the 500th anniversary, but is also home to various exhibitions and events. The rooms have been furnished with period furniture: shields and torches adorn the stone walls, a large fireplace and the candelabra hanging from the high vaults give the place great charm
The oldest information relating to the presence of a large bronze statue existing in Barletta dates back to 1309. It is commonly called Heraclius in the popular and dialectal variant of "Aré". Identification with the aforementioned Byzantine emperor was actually absolutely excluded. Much more probable is his identification with another Eastern emperor, Theodosius II. The bronze figure represents a man of the apparent age of forty years, represented in the moment of greatest glory of that emperor in the whole Empire. Most likely the statue would have been raised in Ravenna. The most "ancient" hypothesis on the presence of the colossus in Barletta dates back to the 1600s, and to the pen of a Jesuit who claimed to have been thrown on the beach of Barletta by a Venetian ship returning from Byzantium after the sacking of 1204.
For many reasons this 'legend' is now excluded while it is more probable that the transport of the precious bronze to Puglia took place on the order of the Swabian emperor Frederick II, entering the cultural climate of the renovatio imperii promoted by the Swabian.
The statue, restored and reinstated of the missing parts already in the Middle Ages, marks with its presence the urban fabric of Barletta since the middle ages having maintained its current location.
The bronze Colossus looks like a 4.50 meters high statue, marshed with late Roman and Byzantine imperial robes such as the evident diadem set in the imperial crown and the garment of the highest rank military leader. The cross in the right hand and the sphere in the left are the symbols of imperial royalty.
The stubby legs were rebuilt in the Middle Ages because it was certain that the originals were cast to obtain two bells in the 14th century.
It is not possible to accurately date the origin of the castle of Barletta, whose current appearance is clearly that of a sixteenth-century fortress but whose origin goes back many centuries. Local historians speak of a "mighty fortress erected by the Normans in the second half of the twelfth century to defend the city, military cornerstone of the defensive line of the Ofanto" when "pirate raids were frequent that plundered the Adriatic coast". The first written document is in a decree of 1240 with which Federico II included the building among the castles of the "Giustizierato di Terra di Bari". Among the testimonies of this period, the Swabian eagle remains a symbol of the Federician authority, now walled in the lunette of the window to the right of those entering the atrium. With the Angevins, the Castle, like the whole city, had a new structure by Pietro d'Angicourt, the famous French architect who contributed to the spread of Gothic language in southern Italy. True right arm of Carlo d'Angiò, L'Angicourt, who owned two houses in Barletta, modified and enlarged the castle. The Aragonese brought the building back to its original defensive vocation, making it an impregnable fortress and a real war machine. Ferdinand I of Aragon in 1461, the day after his coronation in the adjacent cathedral, besieged by pro-Angevin armies, took refuge there until the intervention of Scandeberg. In 1527, as a plaque at the entrance reminds us, even the emperor Charles V, who ultimately owes the current structure of the fortress, participated in the history of the building, adding the moat and the 4 corner bastions. Later there were no major interventions until 1867 when during a public auction the Municipality of Barletta purchased it for the sum of £ 30,000, then granting it to the military authority who made it a weapons depot and a prison. In 1976, a complex restoration intervention consolidated the structure, making it the site of the collections of the city's museum-art gallery, an eternal treasure trove of history and culture.
