An architectural gem about 30 km south of Bari: here, in the "low Murge", the town of Conversano rises, the village that lives at a slow and relaxed pace. Everything is enclosed in its ancient village, starting from the Norman castle which represents the main point of reference, to the Romanesque cathedral from which one is certainly fascinated, to the Benedictine monastery and to the churches of San Cosme and Damiano. Certainly the easiest way to discover Conversano is to let yourself be guided by instinct and explore all the alleys getting lost here and there.
Conversano was already inhabited in the Iron Age, when indigenous peoples founded on the highest hill in the surrounding area a city called Norba which entered the Roman Empire and was endowed with mighty stone walls. Norba means precisely "fortified city".
In some parts of the town, it is still possible to distinguish some remains of the walls of Conversano, the so-called megalithic walls. After the fall of the Roman Empire, from the 5th century AD, the name of the place changed to "Casale Cupersanem" and saw several powerful feudal lords follow: from the Norman Goffredo d'Altavilla, thanks to which Conversano became a real center of power, until to the counts Acquaviva of Aragona, the most important house that took possession of the fief of Conversano until the early 1800s. Today in its articulated architecture Conversano still retains the splendor of the County of the Acquaviva d'Aragona which made Conversano a center full of noble palaces , churches, monasteries and works of art.
Whichever way you enter the city, you can't help but find yourself in the Piazza della Conciliazione. This wonderful square is the "living room of the city", which has always been the center of city life. Also called by the inhabitants "Largo della Corte", here in this splendid space overlook the most important monuments of the country, including the church and the castle.
Conversano Castle welcomes and frames this magical village. It is of Norman origin and is located on the highest point of the city, in a position capable of dominating the entire surrounding area up to the sea. The castle was built by the Norman Goffredo Altavilla around the year 1000 and has origins that go back to a fortress but over the centuries and following numerous alterations it has taken on the appearance of a sumptuous residence. Today the castle houses the municipal art gallery where many of the paintings of the Neapolitan painter of the '600 Paolo Finoglia are kept.
Not far from the castle you are fascinated by the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, the main Catholic place of worship in Conversano, in perfect Apulian Romanesque style. The building was started by the Normans between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, subsequently it was then subject to repeated restoration, the last one started in 1911, following a devastating fire. The facade of the cathedral has the shape of a hut with three portals crowned by a fifteenth-century rose window. Inside it is divided into three naves with matroneums and corresponding to the three semicircular apses of the presbytery. To separate the naves, you can admire columns with Byzantine-inspired capitals with plant, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic motifs.
On the sides of the naves there are blind arches where the two most important furnishings survived the destruction of the 1911 fire: a wooden crucifix of the fifteenth century and the icon of the Maria Santissima della Fonte, protector of the city.
From the back of the cathedral it is easy to reach the convent of S. Benedetto, a marvel of Benedictine art which has remained almost intact at the time. Built in the 11th century on a pre-existing pre-Romanesque building, there is a remarkable Romanesque bell tower on the north facade of the church, and a Baroque bell tower on the front portal. In ancient times the convent was occupied by a female order but Pope Gregory X granted the abbess powers over the clergy and people equal to those of a bishop. For this reason, somewhat exceptional and unique in Western Europe, the monastery of San Benedetto coined the term "Monstrum Apuliae", which means wonder of Puglia.
Inside the convent there is today the civic museum which preserves the finds of ancient Norba.
In the seventeenth century the Counts Isabella Filomarino and Giangirolamo II Acquaviva d'Aragona commissioned a church-convent that was built on a pre-existing building of worship dedicated to San Matteo and renamed of Saints Cosma and Damiano to whom the counts were very devoted because they had received a grace. This church is a true work of art, in fact it boasts a very valuable interior adorned with stuccos, gilding and paintings of which a large part is due to the Neapolitan artist Paolo Finoglio. Also worth mentioning is a seventeenth-century crucifix preserved in the convent and the precious monastic organ, located in the area reserved for the cloister.
In the surroundings it is worth visiting the regional nature reserve of the lakes of Conversano and Gravina di Monsignore where there are ponds where the water of the winter rains remains for nine months a year. Here you leave the village of Conversano and enter a more natural space, made up of country roads, low hills, fruit trees, olive groves and vegetable gardens.
These lakes have always been the main source of water supply for the local population thanks also to the presence of cisterns dug out of the clay. Today they are no longer used as drinking water, but given the naturalistic and landscape importance, their protection was provided which made them become a Nature Reserve in 2006.
