Castello Svevo

I teased you in this morning’s post by saying that because of my late return from Alberobello I wouldn’t have time to see a lot of things, but not none.

I didn’t lie. But it didn’t go quite according to the plan I devised on the bus back from Alberobello.

To be honest, it wasn’t much of a plan. I came up with only one sight I wanted to see. At that point, I wasn’t sure when the bus would arrive in Bari, exactly how long it would take me to walk to the sight, and how long I’d want to spend there.

So I figured I’d see that sight and then, if I still had time left, devise a new plan after all of those factors became known to me, i.e. after I left the sight. Oh, by the way, the Castello Svevo, the site named in the title of this post, is not that sight.

Not the Bari Cathedral

The sight I chose was the Bari Cathedral.

As regular readers know, if there’s an old cathedral in an old European city I’ll probably visit it. It’s a good bet it will be awe-inspiring, a wonder of architecture for its less advanced time, old enough to be legitimately called ancient, cavernous enough to swallow you up, excessive decorated, gaudy (but, except in Barcelona, not Gaudi), or, more likely, some combination of two or more of the above. Any of those qualities make it worthy of at very least a quick gander.

I had Google Maps plot a route from the bus stop to the cathedral. I didn’t follow it exactly because at some points the streetscape in front of me led me to believe that an alternate might be more appealing. Google map seems to be calibrated for speed, not beauty.

I ended up at the back of the cathedral and walked around one side to the front.

On the wall of a building opposite that side of the cathedral hung a plaque that I wanted to tell you about here. I was sure I took a photo of it, but it’s not in my photos.

I used the camera function of Google Translate to try to translate it. It failed, and I had to type in the Italian, but, after using the camera function, I might have forgotten to take an actual picture of it thinking I’d done it then.

I’m probably going to be back in the area again for a reason I’m getting to. If so, I’ll try to remember to take a picture and tell you about it at that point.

When I walked around the side to the front of the cathedral, there was a large crowd in the square at the bottom of the steps in front of the cathedral. I thought they were there to greet me. But they weren’t looking in my direction. Instead, most of them were looking away from me, down the street that leads to the square in front of the cathedral.

I figured maybe that was the way I would have approached the cathedral if I followed Google Maps’ original route. Google Maps probably told them I’d be coming that way. That’s all it was. I was sure.

All the front doors to cathedral were wide open. There was a large crowd inside as well. They looked like they were getting ready to start a service, so I didn’t go in.

I couldn’t figure out what kind of service a Christian church would be holding on a Shabbat afternoon, not yet close to sundown in these daylight saving times. (Today is Saturday.)

I soon found out. A white van drove down the street the crowd was looking at. It stopped in front of the cathedral. When someone opened the back door, I saw numerous floral wreaths inside.

Shortly after that, a white hearse drove down the same street and also stopped in front of the cathedral. An attendant opened the back door, exposing the coffin inside.

Oh, that sort of service. I left. I may come back during one of the remaining two days I have in Bari. Tomorrow is Sunday. I’m not Christian. Nothing happens in cathedrals on Sundays, does it?

At a respectable distance, I pulled out my phone, looked at my guidebook, and made another plan.

Bari’s castle, Castello Svevo*, was nearby. I went there.

(* The website is in Italian. Use the translation function of your browser if necessary.)

Castello Svevo

After my great disappointment with the castle in Lecce, Castello di Carlo V, I was a little apprehensive about trying another castle here. But Castello Svevo restored my appreciation of castles.

It’s a big, imposing, well-kept castle with a moat surrounding it. These days, the moat is grass-filled, not water-filled.

Unlike the Castello di Carlo V in Lecce, in Castello Svevo there are rooms on both the ground and first floors that the public can go into during all the hours the castle is open. Then again, entry to the courtyard of the Castello di Carlo V is free, but it costs ten euros to get into the Castello Svevo’s courtyards and its open rooms. I guess you get what you pay for.

Like in the castle in Lecce, there is a small area of the courtyard of Castello Svevo in which there is a shallow, exposed archaeological excavation. The excavation is protected by railings.

Inside the Castello Svevo, the rooms contain a series of videos displayed on walls and tables describing the history of the castle, the prehistory of the area it’s on, the early development of Bari, the archaeological excavations in and around the castle, and the relics found during those excavations.

One thing I learned is that there’s been a lot of landfill in Bari. In the illustrations of the early days of Castello Svevo, it practically abuts the sea. Today it sits well back of it. One of the videos explains that, at one time, I forget when, a new harbour was built, filling in the land in front of the castle.

Another room in Castello Svevo contains a gallery of plaster casts. I took a few pictures in there, including a closeup of a face at the bottom of a pedestal or a small column, I don’t know which. I took the closeup because I didn’t know when the original that the cast was made from was created, but I figured it was a long time ago. And I was surprised to learn that Mr. Bean was already around back then.

In addition, there’s a small, almost barren chapel with just a single picture behind the altar.

There are also a couple of spots in the ground floor of the Castello Svevo where I could look down at some deeper archaeological excavations that exposed some older walls.

Wandering

My sometimes meandering paths to the cathedral, Castello Svevo, and back to my hotel took me by some stately Bari buildings. I posted a collage of a three of them here.

And, oh, remember yesterday I told you that I spotted a set of scuzzy looking stairs not far from my hotel that seemed to lead to a dark pedestrian tunnel under the railway tracks? I expressed some trepidation about the safety of it.

It turns out Google Maps does know about those stairs. Depending on where you want to go in the centre of the city, they do provide a shortcut compared to the route I took yesterday. But they don’t lead to a scary pedestrian tunnel. In fact, they don’t lead to a pedestrian tunnel, per se, at all.

Google Maps directed me to them on my way back from Castello Svevo to my hotel before dinner. So I can now report on them.

There is a U-shaped road that is depressed from the rest of the street-level in Bari. I hadn’t seen it before because it’s depressed. People often can’t see me when I’m somewhat depressed, either.

The two bars of the U run on either side of railway tracks and gently slope down from the normal street level to the depressed level of the base of the U. That base is a well-lit, wide road with sidewalks on both sides of its that runs through a definitely un-scary tunnel under the tracks.

The stairs I saw yesterday lead down directly to the sidewalk at the base of the U. They have a full wall on only one side. The other side has only a low wall, allowing plenty of natural light in during the day. There is a similar set of steps on the other side of the tunnel, or I can take the sidewalk of the road to walk up to normal street level, depending on where I need to end up.

I felt safe enough that I used that route to escape the restaurant desert my hotel is in for dinner, which was after dark. I’m finishing up this post after dinner, so I can now happily report that I wasn’t murdered or alone on that route.

Tomorrow is another day. Wait. I didn’t mean that to imply that I could still be murdered tomorrow. It was just a way to sign off this post.