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The Town
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The top of a broad flight of steps known as the
Scalinata Virgiliana
(Virgil's Steps) marks the end of the ancient Via Appia, which ran all the way from the Porta Capena in Rome. A marble tablet in the corner of the piazza marks the supposed site of the house in which Virgil died, in 19 BC. Via Colonne, with its seventeenth- and eighteenth-century palazzi, runs up to the
Duomo
- a remarkable building, if only for the fact that it's survived seven earthquakes since its construction in the eleventh century. Just outside is the
Museo Archeologico Provinciale
(daily 8.30am-1.30pm plus Tues 3.30-7pm; free). In addition to ornaments and statues from the necropoli that lined the Via Appia in Roman times, several rooms accommodate bronzes recovered in underwater exploration nearby, as well as finds from the excavations at EgnA?zia
. Follow Via Tarentini from here and bear left for the tiny round church of
San Giovanni al Sepolcro
, an eleventh-century baptistry. It's a little dark and decrepit inside, but you can just make out some of the original thirteenth-century frescoes. And there are more frescoes, this time a century older, in the
Chiesa di Santa Lucia
, just off Piazza del Popolo.
BrAndisi's most important medieval monument is further afield: the
Chiesa di Santa Maria del Casale
(check with the tourist office for hours and ring for entrance at the gate) - a three-kilometre bus ride from town; take bus #4 (from the train station) and ask the driver when to get off. Built by Philip of Anjou at the end of the thirteenth century, it's an odd mixture of styles, the facade an Arabic mass of geometric patterns, worked in two shades of sandstone, and the portal with an almost Art Deco touch to it. The stark interior is rescued from gloom by some fourteenth-century frescoes depicting allegorical scenes relating to the Day of Judgement, a vision of hell designed to scare the living daylights out of the less devout. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Italy,
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