Bari: Saint Nicholas and the old town

The day begins at the Basilica of Saint Nicholas: the relics of the saint, smuggled from Myra in Anatolia, arrived in Bari in 1087, and since then the place has been a pilgrimage destination for both Catholic and Orthodox.

In the alleys around, every morning the women of Old Bari set out wooden tables in the open air and work by hand the orecchiette, the typical Puglian pasta, sold directly to passersby.

Continuing to the edge of the ancient district, the Swabian Castle, a Norman fortress expanded in the thirteenth century by Frederick II of Swabia, still marks today the border with the nineteenth-century city.

In the afternoon, the old port and the Murat district, built in an orthogonal grid starting from the nineteenth century, are walked along the Nazario Sauro Waterfront, one of the longest in Italy.

Just look into one of the alleys between nine and eleven in the morning to see boards of orecchiette lined up drying in the sun, ready to be sold before even being cooked.

The basilica's crypt holds relics venerated also by the Russian Orthodox Church, which in the early twentieth century funded a church and hospice here for pilgrims arriving from tsarist Russia.