The cathedral of Trani, on the water

Most great Italian churches sit at the centre of a town. This one sits at the edge of the land, and the effect is completely different.

Santa Maria di Colonna at Trani — Apulian Romanesque, but not the cathedral itself.

⛪ Land and sea

Built where land and sea meet, the cathedral mixes light and sky, sanctity and adventure, as though it were the natural thing to do. It is Apulian Romanesque, and the material does half the work: the local stone of Trani, a calcareous tufa of a pale pink turning to white, which takes the sunset and holds it.

🪆 Three churches in one

The inside is a matryoshka. Every church here hides another, and there are three:

• The upper church, Santa Maria Assunta — Norman, between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, built after the canonisation of San Nicola Pellegrino. Romanesque and imposing, with a wide central nave divided from the aisles by a double row of paired columns.
• The crypt of San Nicola Pellegrino — Byzantine in feeling, a forest of tall, slender white marble columns.
• The crypt of Santa Maria della Scala — older than the church above it, bare in the early Christian way, and once the home of several relics.

Below all of it there is a further layer again, the hypogeum of San Lucio.

🚪 The details worth looking for

• The bronze door of 1175, divided into 32 panels
• The rose window on the south side
• The great apse window to the east

🏰 What else is here

• The castle of Frederick II, on the water a few hundred metres away
• The old harbour, still working, and one of the pleasanter evening walks in Puglia
• The Jewish quarter, with two former synagogues — Trani had one of the most important Jewish communities in medieval southern Italy

Where everything is: the map of Puglia.