The best walks and hikes around Bitritto

The Balsignano Monumental Complex is an ancient fortified medieval settlement. During your visit, you can visit this evocative archaeological and historical site, comprising a castle with double walls and two important churches: the Church of Santa Maria (with frescoes) and the Church of San Felice, the latter considered a masterpiece of Apulian Romanesque art with Byzantine influences. The complex dates back to the 10th-11th centuries and underwent various historical phases until its abandonment in the 16th century.

Bitetto ist known for the presence of the remains of Blessed Giacomo , a lay friar who died in the odor of sanctity, whose body has remained intact over the centuries. The main monument of the town, the church of San Michele Arcangelo is one of the purest examples of Apulian Romanesque . The epigraph near the portal reveals that the facade was built in 1335 by Mastro Lillo da Barletta on commission from Bishop Bonocore, who wanted to rebuild the city temple on the site of an older cathedral. Bitetto had in fact been a diocesan seat since the 11th century . Oriented according to ancient custom with the presbytery to the east, the church has a severe façade divided into three parts by pilasters and equipped with a large archivolted rose window . Of the three portals, the central one is characterized by a rich sculptural apparatus: two stone lions, crouched on mighty corbels, support columns with capitals with vegetal motifs that support a lunette with bas-reliefs of Christ and the twelve Apostles. The external jambs instead present scenes from the New Testament. The interior, which was heavily plastered in the eighteenth century and was restored to its original Romanesque style in 1959 , is divided into three naves by triple-order wall partitions, where the double-arched arches are surmounted by false matronei and higher up by single-lancet windows. The transept has three apses according to the stylistic features of Apulian Romanesque. The fourteenth-century body is flanked on both sides by two eighteenth-century chapels, that of Purgatory (on the left) and that of the Blessed Sacrament (on the right). Outside, the bell tower, also dating back to the eighteenth century, rests on the Romanesque façade with a typical gabled structure.

The gate owes its name to the underground cisterns used to collect rainwater. For a long time it was one of the main accesses to the old, fortified city, where most of the population lived until the early 18th century.

Gateway to the village of Bitetto

Rural church built by faithful, with dedication to the Holy Virgin, dated in 1759, the year of the encyclical Cum Primum published by the Pope Clement XIII in which the Pontiff severely admonishes all those Ecclesiastics who, eager for easy earnings, engage in commerce and thus degrade the dignity of their condition as clerics or priests. #babaciclistaurbano #historiaetfabulis #balsignano

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The church of San Michele Arcangelo is the cathedral of Bitetto. It was built in the 11th century and is in the Apulian Romanesque style

usually open and visitable on November 1st on the occasion of All Saints' Day